On the issues: Barack Obama

By: Christopher Duray

Posted: 11/3/08

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is the Hawaiian-born son of a Kenyan goat herder in America on a scholarship and a woman from Kansas studying at the University of Hawaii. Eventually, his father returned to Kenya and Obama was raised in Chicago by his mother and her parents. He graduated from Columbia University in 1983, and following college, worked as a community organizer in Chicago. Obama graduated from Harvard Law School in 1991 and went on to become president of the Harvard Law Review. He was elected to the senate in 2004, where he pushed through early childhood education requirements, helped create state earned income tax credit to provide relief to poor families and served on the Veterans' Affairs Committee.

Economy

Obama intends to invest heavily in technologies for manufacturing businesses to increase global competition and create new jobs. He will also investigate promising sciences and research like clean energy and other green technologies to open new sectors for potential jobs. Obama also believes a better defense and encouragement of unionization will help protect the economy and its workers.

To jumpstart the overall economy, Obama proposes a windfall profits tax on oil companies to fund a $1,000 rebate to citizens and a $25 billion state fund to help people and local governments manage the crisis. From there, he intends to enact a tax plan that aims to relieve the middle class. He further plans to reform bankruptcy laws and create better regulations, rating systems, and guidelines for mortgage and credit card practices.

Taxes

Obama advocates cutting taxes for people making less than $250,000 a year, which he says amounts to 95 percent of workers in the country. For those citizens, it could mean an annual reduction of anything from $500 to $3,700, depending on one's salary and number of dependents.

The remaining 5 percent of the country will face higher taxes to compensate, particularly in the top 2 percent of earners.

"Nobody likes taxes," he said in the Oct. 15 debate. "I would prefer that none of us had to pay taxes, including myself. But ultimately, we've got to pay for the core investments that make this economy strong, and somebody's got to do it."

Iraq

Obama has been a vocal opponent of the war since its beginning and says that his Secretary of Defense would make ending the war his top priority. Obama wishes to slowly withdraw troops to a residual task force as soon as it could be ascertained that doing so would not destabilize the region. According to him, the military could potentially leave Iraq by the summer of 2010.

Obama is also interested in maintaining military forces in Afghanistan to eliminate the Taliban threat there. He would also intensify the search for Osama bin Laden, saying that he would be prepared to take military action should the terrorist be discovered in Pakistan - even if the Pakistani government refused to comply.

Health Care

Obama plans to use regulation to ensure that insurance companies cover pre-existing conditions and are limited in overcharging for malpractice insurance. He would also cover part of the health costs companies pay to ensure low premiums, give health care tax credit to small businesses and make larger business devote a minimum percentage of payroll to employee health care. He also intends to establish a new public health care plan based around the one offered to politicians.

Obama plans to fund his health care plan with the money received from rolling back the Bush tax cuts.