End the abuse of no-bid contracts and institute an absolute gift ban for political appointees.
Hire people to serve not based on party or ideology, but only on qualification and experience.
Use the Internet to make government more open and transparent so that anyone can see that Washington’s business is the people’s business.
As we fix Washington, we’ll be able to respond to the great challenges our nation faces, and one of the biggest challenges is jump-starting our economy and ensuring that its opportunities are widely shared.
We know that America succeeds when the playing field is level and open, and people don’t fall behind. Our economy is at its strongest when we reward work, not just wealth, and when all Americans can prosper from growth.
It is with our faith in these self-evident truths that we built the largest economy the world has ever known and the biggest middle class in history. But for the last eight years, we’ve failed to keep the fundamental promise that if you work hard you can live your own vision of the American Dream. Instead, our people are working harder for less, and we’ve lost more than 463,000 jobs in the first seven months of this year. The cost of everything from gas to groceries and college tuition is skyrocketing. Foreclosure activity is the high est it’s been since the Great Depression, and housing values have fallen dramatically. Americans are finding it harder to save, retire, and juggle the demands of work and family. It’s easy to feel as if that dream of boundless opportunity that should be the right of all Americans is slipping away.
These difficult times are not an accident of history. To be sure, some of these problems are a result of changes in our economy that no one can control. But the real struggle being waged in American homes and workplaces today is a consequence of tired and misguided economic policies in Washington. Instead of expanding opportunity for working people, Washington insiders heaped benefits on the wealthiest among us. Instead of making sure that people can live their dreams on Main Street, they tilted the scales for special interests and Wall Street. Instead of saying “We’re all in this together,” they pursued an economic policy that has one idea at its heart: “You’re on your own.”
Barack Obama believes that to steer us out of this downturn and to put America on course to lead in the global economy, we have to hold firm to one core principle: that our economy must grow to advance opportunity for all Americans. Because when it comes to our economy, the American people are not the problem; they are the answer. If more Americans are succeeding, our economy will be a success. This is a uniquely American idea, one that led us to build public high schools when we transitioned from a nation of farms to one of factories, sent the Greatest Generation to college on the GI Bill, and invested in science and research that have led to new discoveries and entire new industries.
To create widespread opportunity and economic prosperity in this new, global economy, we cannot simply look backward for solutions and hope that the New Deal and Great Society programs born of different eras are, by themselves, adequate to meet today’s challenges. Nor can we try to fence off the world beyond our borders. Technology and globalization have triggered a fundamental change in the economy. There is no going back.
Instead, we must adapt our policies and our institutions to a new and changing world while holding fast to our bedrock principles. As President, Barack Obama will:
Jump-start our economy with a $50 billion stimulus plan that will put money directly in the pockets of families struggling with rising food and mortgage payments.
Restore simplicity, fairness, and values to the tax code by rewarding work instead of wealth; giving 150 million middle-class workers and their families up to a $1,000 tax cut; totally eliminating income tax for seven million senior citizens; and making work pay by dramatically expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit.
Sign into law a health care plan that guarantees affordable, quality insurance to every American who wants it; brings down premiums for every family who currently has coverage; boosts quality; requires coverage of preventative care; reduces the price of prescription drugs; and stops insurance companies from denying coverage based on preexisting conditions.
Shore up Americans’ retirements by creating automatic workplace retirement plans, strengthening Social Security, and protecting workers’ pensions.
Help workers share the benefits of economic growth by raising the minimum wage and giving workers a free choice about joining labor unions.
Make college affordable for everyone willing to work for it through a new $4,000 American Opportunity Tax Credit and increasing the size of Pell Grants.
Launch a new energy policy that will help ease the burden of high gasoline prices, free us from relying on monarchs and tyrants for our energy supplies, and slow global warming. The Obama plan will make significant investments in clean, renewable sources of energy, and create up to five million new green jobs.
Keep America competitive by investing in our infrastruc ture—including roads, bridges, rails, locks and levees, and high-speed Internet—and by boosting our investments in scientific research that will be a key to America’s success in the twenty-first century.
Give every child a world-class education by recruiting an army of new teachers with better pay and more support; requiring higher standards and accountability from our classrooms; and telling the truth: that the best education starts with parents who turn off the TV, take away the video games, and are engaged in their children’s lives.
Just as commerce, cargo, and capital pay little heed to the lines on a map in this globalized world, the same is true of the new challenges to our national security. For most of our history, national security threats arose from nation-states mustering armies and deploying navies in the pursuit of treasure or power. Even when the Soviet nuclear threat loomed large, our military, diplomatic, and economic strength, as well as the oceans that surround us, gave the United States a large degree of security. In fact, for the last century, not one of our battles was fought on the American mainland. In our new century, that has changed. New threats have emerged that know no boundaries, come from distant corners of the world, and increasingly pose a direct danger to America.
Weak and failing states from Africa to Central Asia to the Pacific Rim are incubators of resentment and anarchy that can become havens for terrorists and criminals. A global climate crisis is warming the planet with potentially devastating consequences. Killing fields in Rwanda, Congo, and Darfur have offended our humanity and set back the world’s sense of collective security. A new age of nuclear proliferation and poorly secured nuclear material has left the world’s deadliest weapons in the reach of an increasing number of countries from North Korea to Iran. And the very openness of our new world can be exploited for terror as we painfully learned on the morning of September 11. We will never forget the nearly three thousand Americans killed on 9/11—more than we lost at Pearl Harbor. And as we unite to combat this enemy, we must always remember that the attack did not come from a dictator, a country, or an empire. It came from stateless terrorists, who distort Islam and hate America, took refuge in Taliban-run Afghanistan, and masterminded a plot to kill innocent American men, women, and children with abandon.
After 9/11, our calling was to write a new chapter in the American story, turning tragedy into triumph. It’s what we did in the Civil War as a conflict over states’ rights became an opportunity to set the slaves free; after Pearl Harbor as that surprise attack led to a wave of freedom rolling across the Atlantic and Pacific; and during the Cold War as the lifting of the Iron Curtain galvanized us to build new institutions at home, establish strong international partnerships abroad, and stand firm for democratic values.
But our leaders in Washington never summoned us. They didn’t seize the opportunity to devise new security strategies and build new alliances, to secure our homeland and safeguard our values, and to serve a just cause abroad. We were ready. Americans were united, and friends around the