CONWAY -- Republican congressional candidate French Hill and Democratic candidate Patrick Henry Hays clashed over raising the federal minimum wage and the private health care option in Arkansas on Monday during a televised debate.
Hill said Monday that he opposes raising the federal minimum wage and rejected the state's efforts to expand health care coverage through the private option.
Hays said he supports raising the federal minimum wage and the private option.
Hill and Hays hope to replace Republican U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin of Little Rock in central Arkansas' 2nd Congressional District. Griffin is running for lieutenant governor.
Along with Libertarian candidate Debbie Standiford, Hill and Hays both said they would have opposed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, sometimes referred to as "Obamacare." But during their debate on the Arkansas Educational Television Network, they disagreed about the course to take now that the health care legislation has passed.
"While I would have voted against the Affordable Care Act, the private option is certainly an example of how we can work together to solve a problem to help Arkansans out, and that's the kind of message I'd take to Congress," said Hays, a former mayor of North Little Rock.
That led Hill to counter: "I'd say to Pat Hays, you can't have it both ways. You can't be against Obamacare and for the private option. They are one and the same. It is Obamacare in Arkansas."
Hill, a Little Rock banker who favors repealing the Affordable Care Act, said the federal law tries to do too much. He said it's too complicated and "a typical example of a one-size-fits-all solution to meet some challenges in our health care system." The cost of the federal law's regulations "is a job-killing approach" and an impediment to creating jobs, he said.
Standiford, a North Little Rock graphic artist who supports repealing the federal health care law, said health insurance was affordable in the 1960s before federal regulations and funding drove up costs.
"Once again, government is stepping in, trying to regulate the free market and ending up doing more damage than good," she said.
After the debate, Hays told reporters that he wasn't trying to have it both ways.
There are things that can be done to fix the Affordable Care Act, and "we ought to do it in a bipartisan way," just as the private-option program was developed in Arkansas, he said.
The private option is an expansion of Arkansas' Medicaid program, authorized by the federal government and approved by the state Legislature last year. It extended eligibility to adults with incomes of up to 138 percent of the poverty level -- $15,860 for an individual or $32,500 for a family of four.
The federal government will pay the full cost of covering the newly eligible enrollees until 2017, when states will begin paying 5 percent of the cost. The state's share will rise each year until it reaches 10 percent in 2020.
Democratic Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe and two Republican state legislative leaders -- House Speaker Davy Carter of Cabot and Senate President Pro Tempore Michael Lamoureux of Russellville -- supported the program, working to garner the three-fourths supermajority required to get it through both chambers.
On Monday, Hill said he opposes raising the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour because all labor markets need flexibility.
"Raising that minimum wage really deters creating steppingstone-type jobs for the youngest people in our society, who are trying to develop skills in a trade of work," and it also raises consumer prices, he said.
Standiford said that setting arbitrary barriers "to keep kids from getting the skills they need to move on up the ladder is just one more example of a feel-good law where government steps in" and raises the federal minimum wage.
"But if raising the minimum wage will actually have a positive effect, then let's go ahead and raise it to $10, $15, $20 an hour," she said.
Hays said he supports the state's ballot measure raising the state's minimum wage from $6.25 an hour to $8.50 an hour by Jan. 1, 2017, and that "it's an incredible travesty [that] people can work full time and still be considered in poverty."
"It is hard for me to understand where my two opponents are coming from," Hays said.
Raising the federal minimum wage "actually helps the economy. It helps the people to give them the ability to be able to earn a livable wage and be able to take care of their family."
Hays said he doesn't know what "the magic number" is to increase the federal minimum wage, but he hopes Democrats and Republicans can reach an agreement.
Hill said a minimum wage increase "is not any answer" for a family in poverty because it discourages jobs, advancement and work.
The earned income tax credit is "a much more effective idea to help poverty families grow in their ability to earn more income and have more opportunity," he said.
Pertaining to the state's minimum wage ballot measure, Hill has said he's consulting economists and local businesses to understand how it will affect jobs before deciding how he'll vote in November.
Asked when Hill would decide on how he's going to vote, his campaign manager Jack Sisson replied in an email Monday, "Debate speaks for itself." During the debate, Hill did not say how he's going to vote on the state ballot measure. He declined to meet with reporters afterward.
When asked about the nation's immigration issues, Hays said the federal government must secure the borders.
"At the same time, we can deal with some of the issues that have to do with the real economics of the benefits of the guest worker program, for example," he said. "There are numerous examples of crops rotting in fields because we don't have enough workers to go in and actually do the harvest.
"There are bipartisan answers to this, if we could just get some of the folderol out of the way and sit down just like I talked about we did at City Hall."
Hill said immigration splits both parties and Congress, and President Barack Obama has not been a leader on this issue as well as in many other areas.
Obama "has not been able to bring both sides together to focus on the security of our border and to solve this humanitarian crisis on our American-Mexican border that in my judgment can be laid at the foot of President Obama and his administration by encouraging poor families to take the risk of coming to the border with their kids," Hill said. "It breaks my heart to see those kids there. It's a real humanitarian crisis."
Hill said securing the border is "the top challenge," and Congress should make it easier for trade workers and doctoral-degree holders and researchers to legally immigrate into the nation.
Standiford said the nation "is demanding these laborers, [and] the laborers want to be here and if we don't change the law, we will simply spend more and more money on this problem without fixing it."
Metro on 10/14/2014