Price bashes Bush, praises students

About 75 rain-soaked students came to hear Rep. David Price, D-N.C., speak Monday night in Manning Hall about how to turn the country around politically.

The UNC Young Democrats hosted Price, a man who has a strong history with Orange County voters, who was a Morehead Scholar and is now a professor at Duke University.

Price spoke on the big issues facing the country today and how students need to work to get their peers to vote.

He reiterated throughout his speech that the candidates' stances this election season are more stark than ever.

"If issues this year don't turn one onto politics, I don't know what would," Price said.

He also criticized President Bush's foreign and economic policies, saying that he negated 50 years of bipartisan foreign policy with a $9 trillion fiscal reversal and that the downward slope of the economy is a result of Bush's tax cuts.

"Anything would have been better than a 1 percent tax cut to the upper tax bracket," said Price, who favors middle-class tax cuts.

Justin Guillory, UNC YD president, asked Price to discuss current Congressional activities.

"It is easy to forget what is going on in Congress because nothing is going on."

He said Republican partisan politics have slowed down any progress Congress was making on an inferior Medicare bill and the failure to pass transportation and energy bills.

But Price has not given up hope for such legislation.

"I think we can (do it)," he said. "It is an uphill fight but by no means impossible."

Republican campaigners are skilled in what they do, Price said, and they are running a tight ship, a well-financed campaign, and know how to do TV ads.

Dustin Ingalls, a sophomore political science major, said that he talks to people in the Pit about the Democratic candidates but that it is hard to persuade them because of the Republican spin.

But Price said he thinks the big issues work in favor of the Democrats, and the main job of the campaigning is learning how to break through the media.

As encouragement, he said, 18- to 29-year-olds are leaning heavily toward Sen. John Kerry.

Price said the only way to make students who are apathetic toward politics get out and vote is to make it easy and convenient.

"You need to reach out to peers next door or down the hall who think about issues and have serious discussions," he said.

Peter Tinti, a junior political science major, said he tries to get his peers to consider candidates critically. "People I have met on my hall vote for Bush only because their parents vote for Bush," he said.

But Price encouraged everyone to keep trying.

"People need to be convinced that voting matters, that this choice will affect their lives."

Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.