O'Malley: Economy will grow with wage hike.

Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley spoke to a crowd of approximately 60 people at the Fairfield Senior Center Saturday afternoon. O'Malley touched on a variety of topics throughout the hour from expanding social security, a clean energy future, college affordability, holding Wall Street accountable and raising the minimum wage to $15.

"We need to raise the minimum wage so that workers can earn more and in turn our economy can grow," said O'Malley.
While O'Malley was Governor of Maryland, he signed legislation in 2014 that raised the state's minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, a raise which is estimated to benefit 450,000 workers. Questions were raised by the crowd and by reporters which questioned the $15 per hour wage but O'Malley said this is a number that would be reached in big cities like Seattle or Los Angeles before rural Iowa because of the cost of living.

O'Malley told reporters, "however, the federal government needs to create a path moving forward so that wages continune to go up for our country rather than down."

Another concern, also discussed earlier in the day at O'Malley's stop at the Indianola Public Library was brought up in Fairfield— the lack of debates among the democratic candidates. Earlier this month, leaders of the Democratic National Committee announce plans for six presidential candidate debates—the first will take place on Oct. 13 in Nevada and the next one on Nov 14 in Des Moines. There is concern both among supporters and O'Malley himself that these debates are too few and far between compared to ten debates lined up for Republicans through March of 2016.

"We need to start debating among ourselves," said O'Malley. "If you want to see more debates contact the DNC and let them know why you think it's important," said O'Malley to a supporter regarding the lack of debate in the party.

"I think it's ridiculous and people I talk to are pretty offended that the DNC would think that its role is to circle the wagons around the so-called inevitable front-runner and limit debates. That's not the way our party works."

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