The authenticity and universal applicability of these guarantees were never questioned by a democratic power — until recently, and by America! Instea… - Jimmy Carter

You might say minimum wage is ancient history, but he says the minimum wage has caused more misery and more unemployment than anything since the Great Depression. Democrats have always been interested in people that were temporarily out of work and need a way, during those trying times, to feed their families, to keep their children in school. Unemployment compensation was devised by Democrats. Recently, my opponent said that unemployment compensation was just a prepaid vacation for freeloaders. This general sense, that started in the 1930's or before and has come all the way up to this time, to modern days, separates one party from another. I've had major responsibilities on my shoulders as a President to honor your expectations to keep our Nation as you want it.

Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished.

We are now facing a major decision by the Congress and by the Nation on energy legislation. And one of the toughest battles that I have to fight is to protect the consumers and to make sure that the Congress doesn't give the oil companies all the financial breaks as we put into effect an energy package. I might say that I have had superb support from the Vice President, from the Members of Congress from your own State in the House and Senate, and I'm going to go by Sunday afternoon and pick up the finest American that I have ever known--Senator Hubert Humphrey--and he's going to go back to Washington with me. The Michigan delegation came with me. They are helping me, too, with this very difficult energy legislation. But it could mean, if we make a serious mistake, a devastating blow to the people who are not sometimes adequately represented by the lobbyists in Washington. And I hope that you all will look on me as your prime lobbyist in Washington for those who don't have strong representation at times. We have done a few things, just to answer your specific questions, on food. This year already the Congress has very wisely removed the purchase requirement for food stamps, which, I think, will make the program much easier to administer in the future, and it will prevent poor people from having to put cash money into food stamps. They'll get the food stamp themselves now in the future without having to put money into it. We also have done the best we could to provide some help for fuel costs during the rough winter we had last year. We'll have the same program, I don't have any doubt, this winter to take care of families who might have their energy cut off. We have put forward, in addition, some programs that will be of great help to the poorer-built homes, with direct aid for those who want to insulate their homes. Quite often the poorer a family is, the more inefficient their home is in preserving heat and energy, and we want to be sure that that's corrected in this bill so that it will be a protection for you in the future. We want to make sure that the money collected on oil price increases goes back to the consumers directly. And as you know, there's a great deal of pressure to give a large part of this money to the oil companies. We are trying to have electricity rate reform. At this time the electric power companies charge the highest electric rates to those homeowners who use the least amount of electricity. If you have a big building like this or a big office building or a big factory, the more electricity you use, the less you pay per kilowatt-hour. And we want to be sure that that's turned around.