Low-income people, racial or ethnic minorities, pregnant women, seniors, people with special needs, people in rural areas - they all have a much harder time accessing a dentist than other groups of Americans.
Programs that pay farmers not to farm often devastate rural areas. The reductions hurt everyone from fertilizer companies to tractor salesmen.
In Pakistan, the right to go to school is not a given. In the more rural areas, a girl is born, married off as early as 9 years old, and basically lives life under the control of men.
One challenge is trying to extend access to more poorly served communities in rural areas and in the inner city. Sometimes you have kids who are suffering from trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder, and they have no way of getting access to the remedies that are available to them.
There's no reason why children in inner cities or rural areas do not receive the same quality education or opportunities as those in suburbs or wealthy neighborhoods. If we truly believe in giving all citizens a chance to pursue happiness and pursue their goals, then we cannot continue to marginalize entire groups of people.
We must do all we can to reduce congestion in our urban areas and increase access and mobility in our rural areas, and this extra funding will help us get there.
I represent nine sovereign Sioux tribes. In South Dakota, some of the tribes are in the most remote, rural areas of the country. They lack essential infrastructure. Some communities don't even have clean drinking water.
Taking the entire globe, if North America and Western Europe can be called the 'cities of the world', then Asia, Africa and Latin America constitute 'the rural areas of the world'.
Voting is a Constitutional right. Absent any evidence of fraud, all Americans have a protected right to vote, be they rich or poor, black, Hispanic or white, people who live in a big city or in remote rural areas.
Generally, Iowans are Iowans no matter where you go. There are some different issues in Des Moines than in the real rural areas. But I haven't seen any real difference outside of just local issues.