Editor’s note: This month, the two major candidates for president or their representatives respond to a Denver Post request for their plans on tackling four major issues. Today, Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain outline their platforms on the economy.
This is a time of great uncertainty for America. Banks have closed and markets have tumbled as the era of greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street and in Washington has led us to a financial crisis as serious as any we have faced since the Great Depression.
We’ve already lost three-quarters of a million jobs this year. In Denver and all across America, it’s harder to make the mortgage or fill up your gas tank, or pay the bills sitting on the counter.
The money you’ve been putting away for your retirement or your kids’ college education is disappearing faster than you can count. The dream that so many generations have fought for feels like it’s slowly slipping away.
So I know these are tough times. But it’s not a time for fear or panic. It’s a time for resolve and leadership. We can steer ourselves out of this crisis — but it will take a new direction. It will take new leadership in Washington and real change in the policies and politics of the last eight years.
That’s why the decision you make in 23 days is so important.
My opponent thinks we can steer ourselves out of this crisis by heading in the same, disastrous direction. He’s said our economy has made great progress these past eight years. The very morning this crisis became clear, he actually said, “The fundamentals of our economy are strong.”
But we can’t afford four more years of the economic theory that says we should give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. We can’t afford more four years of John McCain’s call for less regulation so that no one in Washington is watching anyone on Wall Street. We’ve seen where that’s led us, and we’re not going back.
You’ve heard a lot about taxes in this campaign. Here’s the truth. John McCain and I are both offering tax cuts. But there’s a difference: He wants to give the average Fortune 500 CEO a $700,000 tax cut, but nothing at all to more than 100 million Americans.
I’ll give a middle-class tax cut to 95 percent of all workers. If you make less than $250,000 a year, you won’t see your taxes increase one single dime. Because in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class.
My opponent wants to give $200 million in tax cuts to the biggest corporations in America. I will eliminate capital gains taxes for the small businesses and the startups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow.
John McCain wants to give tax breaks to the corporations that ship our jobs overseas. I will end those tax breaks and give them to companies that create good jobs right here in America.
While we’re talking job creation, I will invest $15 billion a year in renewable sources of energy to create 5 million new green jobs over the next decade. They’ll be jobs building solar panels and wind turbines and fuel-efficient cars. Jobs that will help us end our dependence on oil from the Middle East. Jobs that pay well and can’t ever be outsourced.
I’ll also put 2million more Americans to work rebuilding our crumbling roads, schools, and bridges — because it is time to build an American infrastructure for the 21st century.
Here’s what else we’ll do. We’ll reform our health care system to relieve families, businesses, and the entire economy from the crushing cost of health care, and strengthen Social Security for future generations — not gamble it on the market.
We’ll end the “anything goes” culture on Wall Street with real regulation that protects your investments and pensions ahead of CEO bonuses. I’ll crack down on lobbyists once and for all so their backroom deal-making no longer drowns out the voices of the middle class and undermines our common interests as Americans.
And we will bring a responsible end to the war in Iraq so we stop spending $10 billion a month rebuilding their economy when we should be rebuilding ours.
Doing all this won’t be easy. But we are Americans. We’ve faced difficult times before. And at each of those moments, we’ve risen to meet the challenge because we’ve never forgotten the fundamental truth that, here in America, our destiny is not written for us. It is written by us.
So if you want the next four years looking like the last eight, then I am not your candidate. But if you want real change that rebuilds our middle class and creates jobs, then I ask you to give me your vote on Nov. 4. And if you do, I promise you — we will win this election and change America together.
