For the second time in his long campaign, Democratic presidential candidate John Delaney made a stop in Washington Sunday afternoon.

Three local voters sat down with the former Maryland congressman at Frontier Family Restaurant to hear his take on issues that face rural America.

“One of the things I’ve been focused on a lot is what’s happening in small towns,” Delaney said. “I think it’s actually a crisis in this country. For most towns, they’re shrinking and they’re aging. That puts enormous pressure on public schools and puts enormous pressure on public health systems.”

He pointed out that while large counties are growing, rural counties are shrinking.

“You’ve got the big counties adding businesses, which means adding jobs, at a really healthy clip,” he said. “You’ve got the small counties losing businesses, which means losing jobs. What you have is all of the jobs in this country are getting created in five to 10 cities.

“I would argue that unless we fix rural America, we’re never going to have a stable democracy.”

Delaney said that one policy that would act as a “spark plug” for rural America is a massive infrastructure spending plan.

“We need to spend $1 trillion-$2 trillion on infrastructure,” he said. “We used to spend 5% of our economy on infrastructure; today we spend 2% and China spends 8%. As part of the national infrastructure program, we should have a disproportionate allocation for communities that need the money.”

He also suggested that a law be passed requiring that 25% of all government contracts go to companies with at least half of their employees in struggling communities.

“That would change everything,” he said.

Delaney also discussed the need for an increased focus on education.

“It’s pretty clear that where we have a massive deficiency in education right now is in early childhood,” he said. “Not enough kids have access to early childhood education and pre-K.

“Early childhood is really allocated based on resources. Well-off kids have access to early childhood education, and poor kids don’t.”

Regarding post-secondary education, he said that plans to offer free college to students are not necessarily the answer.

“We need to get to a framework in this country where we don’t think about degrees, but we think about skills,” he said. “What kids really need are skills. After high school, we have to create equal incentives for kids to pursue career and technical training, either through a community college or some other program. That should be free.

“If you make four-year college free, we’re going to have a society with people walking around with all these degrees that they can’t get jobs with.”

On healthcare, Delaney said that some candidates’ plans to make private insurance illegal are not realistic.

“We should have universal healthcare in this country, where everyone has basic federal health insurance as a right,” he said. “That doesn’t mean I think we should make private insurance illegal. That’s a terrible idea. It’ll never happen.

“When people are saying ‘let’s throw the whole system out the window and start from scratch,’ that’s never going to happen.”

Instead, he proposed creating basic universal healthcare coverage, where if people have a plan through their employer, they can opt out.