Imagine A Great Election

TAXES: Democratic Candidates’ Plan

• Create a new “Making Work Pay” tax credit of up to $500 per person, or $1,000 per working family, that will eliminate income taxes for 10 million Americans.
• Eliminate income taxes for seniors making less than $50,000.
• Simplify tax filings for middle-class Americans.
• Make the Research and Development Tax Credit permanent.
• Expand the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit.

TAXES: Republican Candidates’ Plan

• Keep the top tax rate at 35 percent.
• Maintain the 15 percent rates on dividends and capital gains.
• Phase out the Alternative Minimum Tax.
• Cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent to make the U.S. a more attractive place in which to conduct business.
• Establish a permanent tax credit to encourage innovation and remove the uncertainty now hanging over businesses as they make R&D investment decisions.
• Allow first-year deduction of equipment and technology to provide an immediate boost to capital expenditures and reward investments in cutting-edge technologies.
• Ban internet taxes.
• Ban any cell phones tax.
• Double the child exemption.

TRADE: Democratic Candidates’ Plan

• Fight for a trade policy that opens up foreign markets to support good American jobs.
• Work with leaders of Canada and Mexico to amend the North American Free Trade Agreement so it works for American workers.
• Update existing system of Trade Adjustment Assistance to extend it to service industries, create flexible education accounts to help workers retrain, and provide retraining assistance for workers in sectors of the economy vulnerable to dislocation.
• End tax breaks for companies that send jobs overseas.
• Reward companies that support American workers.

TRADE: Republican Candidates’ Plan  

• Support free trade.
• Support NAFTA as is.
• Reduce barriers to trade.
• Level the global playing field.
• Build effective enforcement of global trading rules.

NATIONAL SECURITY: Democratic Candidates’ Plan

• Rebuild the military for 21st-Century tasks.
• Build defense capabilities for the 21st century.
• Restore the readiness of the National Guard and Reserves.
• Promote global stability.
• Restore our alliances.
• Reform contracting.
• Add personnel, infrastructure and technology to secure our borders and our ports of entry.
• Require chemical facilities to enhance security.
• Establish guidelines for tracking, controlling, and accounting for spent fuel at nuclear power plants.
• Establish mandatory planning for evacuating people with special needs.
• Institute a centralized, federal database for individuals displaced by an emergency.
• Provide for drinking water systems to upgrade monitoring and security efforts.
• Require nuclear plants to inform state and local officials if there is an unintentional leak of a radioactive substance.

NATIONAL SECURITY: Republican Candidates’ Plan

• Significantly streamline Congressional oversight of the Department of Homeland Security.
• Find and disrupt terrorist organizations and their financing and ensure that weapons of mass destruction do not fall into terrorists’ hands. 
• Enhance our intelligence gathering and analysis capabilities.
• Share information the federal government has in a timely way with state and local law enforcement authorities.
• Push for federal funding to be allocated to state, local and tribal governments on a risk assessment basis.
• Finish securing our land borders, ports and airports.
• Require that border-state governors certify that the border is secure.
• Stop illegal immigration and drug smuggling across borders.
• Ensure that sophisticated U.S. technology and weaponry do not get into the hands of terrorist organizations or rogue states.
• Obtain the international consensus for strict sanctions that would prevent Iran from obtaining the material and know-how necessary for developing nuclear weapons.
• Ensure that government response efforts operate immediately and effectively.
• Leverage private sector expertise to enhance recovery efforts.
• Support First Responders.
• Protect critical infrastructure.
• Protect water sources and storage systems.
• Ensure that chemical facilities develop Security Vulnerability Assessments and adopt Site Security Plans that identify and address security vulnerabilities.
• Protect critical information infrastructure and enhance cyber security.
• Reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

IRAQ/FOREIGN POLICY: Democratic Candidates’ Plan

• Responsibly end the war in Iraq, with a phased withdrawal of troops engaged in combat operations.
• Rebuild diplomatic links throughout the hemisphere through aggressive, principled, and sustained diplomacy in the Americas.
• Allow unlimited Cuban-American family travel and remittances to the island.
  Increase support for the building blocks of durable democracies: strong legislatures, independent judiciaries, free press, vibrant civil society, honest police forces, religious freedom, and the rule of law.
• Bring together the countries of our region in a new Energy Partnership for the Americas to forge a path toward sustainable growth and clean energy.
• Increase aid to the Americas.
• Double our foreign assistance to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of cutting extreme poverty around the world in half by 2015.
• Establish a new hemispheric security initiative.
• Increase U.S. focus on the long-term challenges of education, poverty reduction, disease, strengthening democratic institutions and spurring sustainable economic development in Africa.
• End the genocide in Darfur.
• Fully fund debt cancellation for heavily indebted poor countries to provide sustainable debt relief.
• Invest at least $50 billion by 2013 for the global fight against HIV/AIDS.
• Establish an Add Value to Agriculture Initiative to extend seed capital and technical assistance to small and medium enterprises.
• Reform the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
• Launch the Global Energy and Environment Initiative to ensure African countries have access to low-carbon energy technology and can profitably participate in the new global carbon market.
• Strengthen the African Growth and Opportunity Act to ensure African producers can access the U.S. market and encourage more American companies to invest on the continent.
• Address the new challenges Russia poses by 1) engaging directly with the Russian government on issues of mutual interest; 2) keeping the door open to fuller integration into the global system for all states in the region, including Russia; 3) strengthening the Transatlantic alliance.
• Ensure a strong U.S.-Israel partnership.
• Support Israel’s right to self-defense.
• Support foreign assistance to Israel.
• Engage the American people on foreign policy.
• Secure loose nuclear materials from terrorists.
• Strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
• Strengthen NATO.
• Seek new partnerships in Asia.
• Pursue tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions.
• Meet with the leaders of all nations, friend and foe.

IRAQ/FOREIGN POLICY: Republican Candidates’ Plan

• Support the government of Iraq until it becomes capable of governing itself and safeguarding its people. 
• Will not withdraw American troops until that has occurred.
• Bolster proven microfinance programs to spur local-level entrepreneurship throughout Iraq.
• Encourage the international community to apply real pressure to Syria and Iran to change their behavior.
• Bolster U.S. regional military posture to make clear to Iran our determination to protect our forces and deter Iranian intervention.

GOVERNMENT ETHICS/CORRUPTION: Democratic Candidates’ Plan

• Create a centralized Internet database of lobbying reports, ethics records, and campaign finance filings for public access.
• Establish an independent watchdog agency to oversee the investigation of congressional ethics violations.
• Create a “contracts and influence” database to disclose how much federal contractors spend on lobbying, what contracts they get, and how well they complete them.
• Ensure any tax breaks for corporate recipients—or tax earmarks—are publicly available on the Internet in an easily searchable format.
• End abuse of no-bid contracts by requiring that nearly all contract orders over $25,000 be competitively awarded.
• Allow the public to review and comment on non-emergency bills on the White House website for five days before the president signs them.
• Disclose the name of the legislator who asked for each earmark with written justification 72 hours before an earmark can be approved by the full Senate.
• Require Cabinet officials to have periodic national broadband town hall meetings to discuss issues before their agencies.
• Disclose communications about regulatory policymaking between persons outside government and White House staff to the public.
• Require appointees who lead executive branch departments and rulemaking agencies to conduct significant business of the agency in public so any citizen can see in person or watch on the Internet these debates.
• Make the timely release of presidential records quick and easy.
• Free the Executive Branch from special interest influence.

GOVERNMENT ETHICS/CORRUPTION: Republican Candidates’ Plan

• Stop pork barrel spending: the willful setting aside of taxpayer dollars for the pet projects of special interests, often through last minute additions to appropriations bills.
• Enforce long-standing prohibitions on corporate and union contributions to federal political parties.
• Enforce sensible donation limits.
• Disclose how candidates and campaigns are funded.
• Enforce rules that promote maximum public participation in the political process and limit opportunities for corruption.
• Stop the “revolving door” by which lawmakers and other influential officials leave their posts and become lobbyists for the special interests they have aided.
• Restore fiscal responsibility.

SOCIAL SECURITY: Democratic Candidates’ Plan

• Against raising the retirement age.
• Against privatizing Social Security.
• Ensure Social Security is solvent and viable.
• Protect Social Security benefits.
• Ask those making more than $250,000 to contribute a bit more to Social Security to keep it sound.

SOCIAL SECURITY: Republican Candidates’ Plan 

• Supplement the current Social Security system with personal retirement accounts.

HEALTH CARE: Democratic Candidates’ Plan

• Expand the Family and Medical Leave Act.
• Provide cheaper prescription drugs.
• Protect and strengthen Medicare.
• Provide transparency to Medicare prescription drug plans.
• Strengthen long-term care 0ptions.

HEALTH CARE: Republican Candidates’ Plan

• Use competition to improve the quality of health insurance with greater variety to match people’s needs, lower prices, and portability.
• Encourage and expand the benefits of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) for families.
• Give every family a direct refundable tax credit of $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families to offset the cost of insurance. Families can choose the insurance provider that suits them best; the money would be sent directly to the insurance provider. 
• Establish a guaranteed access plan.
• Bring greater competition to our drug markets through safe re-importation of drugs and faster introduction of generic drugs.
• Promote coordinated care.
• Promote greater access to health care through walk-in clinics in retail outlets.
• Promote the rapid deployment of information systems and technology to allow doctors to practice across state lines.
• Reform the payment systems in Medicaid and Medicare.
• Pass medical liability reform that eliminates lawsuits directed at doctors who follow clinical guidelines and adhere to safety protocols.
• Bring transparency to health care costs.
• Develop a strategy for meeting the challenge of a population needing greater long-term care.
• Advance federal research into autism, promote early screening, and identify better treatment options, while providing support for children with autism so that they may reach their full potential.

THE ENVIRONMENT: Democratic Candidates’ Plan

• Invest in a clean energy economy and create millions of new green jobs.
• Create new job training programs for clean technologies.
• Boost the renewable energy sector.
• Ensure 10 percent of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025.
• Reduce electricity demand 15 percent from projected levels by 2020.
• Weatherize at least one million low-income homes each year for the next decade.
• Enter into public private partnerships to develop five “first-of-a-kind” commercial scale coal-fired plants with clean carbon capture and sequestration technology.
• Require all pollution credits to be auctioned through a cap-and-trade policy. Proceeds will go to investments in a clean energy future, habitat protections, and rebates and other transition relief for families.
• Re-engage with the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC)—the main international forum dedicated to addressing the climate problem.
• Create a Global Energy Forum of the world’s largest emitters to focus exclusively on global energy and environmental issues.

THE ENVIRONMENT: Republican Candidates’ Plan

• Establish a market-based system to curb greenhouse gas emissions, mobilize innovative technologies, and strengthen the economy.
• Establish a climate cap-and-trade mechanism to set a limit on greenhouse gas emissions and allow entities to buy and sell rights to emit.
• Reform federal government research funding and infrastructure to support the cap-and-trade emissions reduction goals and emphasize the commercialization of low-carbon technologies.   

ABORTION: Democratic Candidates’ Plan

• Make preserving women’s rights under Roe v. Wade a priority.
• Against any constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade.
• Expand access to contraception, health information and preventive services to help reduce unintended pregnancies

ABORTION: Republican Candidates’ Plan

• “John McCain believes Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned, and as president he will nominate judges who understand that courts should not be in the business of legislating from the bench.
• “Constitutional balance would be restored by the reversal of Roe v. Wade, returning the abortion question to the individual states. The difficult issue of abortion should not be decided by judicial fiat.”
• Promote adoption as a first option for women struggling with a crisis pregnancy.
• Prohibit discrimination against families with adopted children.
• Provide adoption education.
• Permit tax deductions for qualified adoption expenses.
• Remove barriers to interracial and inter-ethnic adoptions.

IMMIGRATION: Democratic Candidates’ Plan

• Fix the dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy and increase the number of legal immigrants to keep families together and meet the demand for jobs that employers cannot fill.
• Remove incentives to enter the country illegally by cracking down on employers who hire undocumented immigrants.
• Allow undocumented immigrants in good standing to pay a fine, learn English, and go to the back of the line to apply for citizenship.
• Promote economic development in Mexico to decrease illegal immigration.

IMMIGRATION: Republican Candidates’ Plan