Obama

The issues



1. Abortion: He favors abortion rights. To reduce abortion he supports a comprehensive sex-education program in which both abstinence and contraception are priorities. He also says, "we should make sure that adoption is an option."



2. Education: Encourage but not require universal pre-kindergarten programs, expand teacher mentoring programs and reward teachers with higher pay not tied to standardized test scores. Change No Child Left Behind law "so that we're not just teaching to a test and crowding out programs like art and music." Tax credit to pay up to $4,000 of college expenses for students who perform 100 hours of community service a year. He supports charter schools "as a way to foster competition in the public school system." However, he said, he remains skeptical of private school voucher programs because they could lead to "further stratification of the schools … without any net improvement."



3. Death Penalty: Supports the death penalty for crimes for which the "community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage." He has written bills mandating videotaping of interrogations and confessions in capital cases and sought other changes in system that had produced wrongful convictions.



4. Environment: He has sponsored earlier legislation that would set mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions. He supports tougher fuel efficiency standards because he was taught that "importance of us being good stewards of the land" and given him a moral imperative to be less wasteful. He also supports measures to prevent global warming. Obama has called for stricter restrictions on the amount of carbon in fuels and tougher fuel efficiency standards for cars.



5. Health Care: He has called "belief in universal health" care one of the "core values" of the Democratic Party. Obama proposes a national health care plan that would allow individuals and businesses to buy health care . The plan would mandate coverage for children but not for adults.


6. Immigration: He voted for border fence. Obama says that "the time to fix our broken immigration system is now." He supports reform that provides "stronger enforcement on the border" by adding personnel, infrastructure and technology. He wants to "crack down on employers that hire undocumented immigrants." and to help businesses know who they are hiring, Obama supports a congressional proposal that would create a new employment eligibility verification system so employers can verify that their employees are legally eligible to work in the U.S. He says he will "not support any bill that does not provide [an] earned path to citizenship for the undocumented population." He has been a guest-worker of programs that first offer available jobs to american workers.



7. Iraq War: His plan would complete withdrawal of combat troops by end of 2009, because he claims it is a "dumb" and "rash" war. He campaigned against the war and if he becomes president he will remove one to two combat brigades each month.



8. Economy: Barack Obama will provide a tax cut for working families. Provide tax relief for small businesses and startups by eliminating all capital gains taxes on startup and small businesses to encourage innovation and job creation. Also he will fight for fair trade by fighting for a trade policy that opens up foreign markets to support good American jobs. They will use trade agreements to spread good labor and environmental standards around the world.



9. Poverty: Obama helped author the state earned income tax credit, which provided tax cuts for low-income families. In September 2007, Obama had a plan to cut taxes for the middle class and senior citizens by eliminating corporate loopholes and tax breaks. Also Obama is a U.S. Senate co-sponsor of the Global Poverty Act, which calls on the president to develop a comprehensive agenda to cut extreme global poverty in half by 2015. He has supported bills increasing the minimum wage.



10. Stem Cell Research: Obama supports relaxing federal restrictions on embryonic stem cell research. He voted for the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2005, which was vetoed by President Bush. The bill would have allowed federal funding to be used for research on stem cell lines obtained from discarded human embryos originally created for fertility treatments.