Democratic presidential candidate Kennedy in Rock Hill, touts low-interest mortgages
Democratic presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. met with a crowd of nearly 500 people Sunday afternoon at Winthrop University.
The university in Rock Hill, S.C., is working to have more candidates on campus as part of its Presidential Election Initiative, which is designed to give students, staff and the community a closer look at candidates.
Kennedy is the son of the late Robert F. Kennedy Sr., who was shot and killed in 1968 amid his own presidential bid and a nephew of President John F. Kennedy, who also was assassinated.
Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, said the U.S. government has spent too much money in unnecessary wars. The only thing the U.S. has gotten from wars is debt, he said, and in the meantime, military aggression has ended friendships with other countries.
Kennedy alluded to the U.S. spending more money on the war in Ukraine than it spends on the environment and public health. He cited neighborhoods in Chicago that are worse off than war-torn Afghanistan.
“We have a crisis here in this country,” he said. “We need that money here.”
The war in Ukraine is not the only issue Kennedy wants to address.
Kennedy said he visited San Francisco, where homelessness is a problem. He said for most of the people he spoke with, drugs were not the issue. The inability to afford housing is the problem, he said.
Kennedy said he has talked to people who have to decide whether to eat or pay for prescription medication, or if the baby is sick enough to take to the doctor.
He said he wants to “relaunch a housing boom” such as the one that occurred after World War II. He wants Congress’s help with changing the tax code so it’s hard for large corporations to buy single family homes.
Kennedy said he wants to establish a new class of mortgages with an interest rate of three percent and would finance them by selling tax-free treasury bills.
“I’m going to give everybody a rich uncle and that rich uncle is Uncle Sam,” he said.
Kennedy said he has other programs that are “imaginative, that are thoughtful, that are easy, that can get Republican and Democratic support that makes sense, because they are common sense.”
He said his job is to “unravel the empire abroad,” by rebuilding the U.S.
James Castro of Lancaster was a vocal member of the audience and said he believes in Kennedy’s message.
“I believe that Robert Kennedy has a message that can tackle a lot of the problems that our country has,” Castro said. “It’s really important to me some of these issues are addressed.”
After he ended his speech, Kennedy told the crowd he could answer questions or take selfies. The crowd shouted “selfies!” and a line formed hundreds deep.
