What should be done about the federal debt?
Debt
Tackle the debt with a mix of spending cuts and revenue increases. Let Bush-era tax cuts expire for couples making more than $250,000, which would generate more than $700 billion over 10 years. Also, would set a 30 percent tax rate on taxpayers making more than $1 million, increasing taxes for some but not all millionaires and billionaires. That would generate about $47 billion over 10 years.
Reduce the budget deficit by restoring full employment, cutting the bloated military budget, and cutting private health insurance waste. Eliminate needless tax giveaways. Require full disclosure of corporate subsidies in the budget and stop hiding subsidies in complicated tax code.
Submit a balanced budget to Congress in 2013. End excessive spending, bloated stimulus programs, unnecessary farm subsidies, and earmarks. Audit the Federal Reserve. Reassess the role of the federal government and identify responsibilities that can be met more efficiently by the private sector. Recognize that you can't have limited government at home, but big government abroad. Identify and implement common-sense cost savings to place Medicare on a path toward long-term solvency. Block grant Medicare and Medicaid funds to the states, allowing them to innovate, find efficiencies and provide better service at lower cost.
Cap federal spending at 20 percent of gross domestic product, down from today's recession-swollen 25 percent. Favor constitutional balanced budget amendment. Propose 10 percent cut in federal workforce, elimination of $1.6 billion in Amtrak subsidies and cuts of $600 million to the public arts and broadcasting.
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What would you do to invigorate the economy?
Economy
Propose tax breaks for U.S. manufacturers producing domestically or repatriating jobs from abroad, and tax penalties for U.S. companies outsourcing jobs. Supported $800 billion stimulus plan and Wall Street and auto industry bailouts begun under George W. Bush.
Enact the Full Employment Program which will directly provide 25 million green jobs in sustainable energy, mass transit, sustainable organic agriculture, and clean manufacturing, as well as social work, teaching, and and other service jobs. Provide grants and low-interest loans to green businesses and cooperatives, with an emphasis on small, locally based companies. Renegotiate NAFTA and other "free trade" agreements that export American jobs, depress wages, and undermine the sovereign right of Americans and citizens of other countries to control their own economy. Make the minimum wage a living wage. Ensure equal pay for equal work, ending discrimination based on race, gender, or generation.
Cut federal spending, cut taxes, and reduce federal involvement in the economy. Restrict Federal Reserve policy to maintaining price stability, not bailing out financial firms or propping up the housing sector. Legalize, tax, and regulate marijuana, rather than wasting money on an expensive and futile prohibition. Eliminate needless barriers to free trade and make it easier for would-be legal immigrants to apply for work visas.
Support lower taxes, less regulation, balanced budget, more trade deals to spur growth. Replace jobless benefits with unemployment savings accounts. Propose repeal of the law (Dodd-Frank) toughening financial-industry regulations after the meltdown in that sector. Propose changing, but not repealing, the (Sarbanes-Oxley) law tightening accounting regulations in response to corporate scandals, to ease the accountability burden on smaller businesses.
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What changes would you make to federal energy policy?
Energy
Support drilling plan in Arctic Ocean opposed by environmentalists. Support a temporary moratorium on deep-water drilling after the massive BP oil spill but push for more oil and gas drilling overall. Propose Congress give oil market regulators more power to control price manipulation by speculators and stiffer fines for doing so. Embrace nuclear power as a clean source.
Redirect research funds from fossil fuels and other dead-end industries toward research in renewable energy and conservation. Build a nationwide smart electricity grid that can pool and store power from a diversity of renewable sources, giving the nation clean, democratically controlled, terrorist-proof energy. Phase out nuclear power and end nuclear subsidies. End federal subsidies for "clean coal." Halt all drilling that poses a threat to public lands or water resources. Halt the Keystone XL pipeline and bring the tar sand oils under a comprehensive climate protection treaty.
Government subsidies and incentives for specific energy resources don't work. Cap and Trade schemes, tax subsidies, and government efforts to steer us to one energy source over another are inherently inefficient, disrupt the market, and ultimately impose costs we cannot afford.
Accelerate drilling permits in areas where exploration has already been approved for developers with good safety records. Supports drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic and Pacific outer continental shelves, Western lands, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and offshore Alaska; and supports exploitation of shale oil deposits. Reduce obstacles to coal, natural gas and nuclear energy development, because green power has yet to become viable.
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What changes would you make to federal health care policy?
Health care
Support the federal health care law passed in 2010. Under the law, insurers will be banned from denying coverage to people with pre-existing illness, tax credits for middle-income and low-income people will subsidize premiums, people without work-based insurance will have access to new markets and small business gets help for offering insurance.
Provide complete, affordable, quality health care for every American through an improved Medicare-for-all insurance program. Allow full access to all medically justified contraceptive and reproductive care. Roll back the community drivers of chronic disease, including poor nutrition, health-damaging pollution, and passive dirty transportation. Avoid chronic diseases by investing in essential community health infrastructure such as local, fresh, organic food systems, pollution-free renewable energy, phasing out toxic chemicals, and active transportation such as bike paths and safe sidewalks that dovetail with public transit. End overcharging for prescription drugs by using bulk purchasing negotiations.
Repeal President Obama's healthcare plan, as well as the failed Medicare prescription drug benefit. Fewer government mandates and less regulation will allow innovation and competition to make health care more affordable and more accessible. Removing arbitrary obstacles to interstate competition among health insurance providers will reduce costs. Federal assistance for those who cannot afford essential health care should be provided through simple block grants to the states, where innovation will create efficiencies and better care at less cost.
Work to repeal Obama's federal health care law. States, not Washington should drive policy on the uninsured. Propose to guarantee that people who are "continuously covered" for a certain period be protected against losing insurance if they get sick, leave their job and need another policy. Would expand individual tax-advantaged medical savings accounts and let the savings be used for insurance premiums as well as personal medical costs. Would let insurance be sold across state lines to expand options, and restrict malpractice awards to restrain health care costs. Introduce "generous" subsidies to help future retirees buy private insurance instead of going on traditional Medicare. No federal requirement for people to have health insurance. On Medicaid, propose to convert program to a federal block grant administered by states.
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What would you do to overhaul federal tax policy?
Taxes
Raise taxes on the wealthy and ensure they pay 30 percent of their income at minimum. Supports extending Bush-era tax cuts for everyone making under $200,000, or $250,000 for couples. Support letting the top tax rates go back up 3 to 4 points to 39.6 percent and 36 percent, and raise rates on capital gains and dividends for the wealthy.
Rewrite the entire tax code to be truly progressive with tax cuts for working families, the poor and middle class, and higher taxes for the richest Americans. Stop draining the non-profit sectors of our economy in order to give tax cuts to the for-profit sectors. Establish a 90 percent tax on bonuses for bailed out bankers.
Abolish the Internal Revenue Service. Enact the Fair Tax to tax expenditures, rather than income, with a 'prebate' to make spending on basic necessities tax free. With the Fair Tax, eliminate business taxes, withholding and other levies that penalize productivity, while creating millions of jobs.
No one with adjusted gross income under $200,000 should be taxed on interest, dividends or capital gains. Cut corporate tax rate to 25 percent from a high of 35 percent. Oppose proposals to replace current tax system with national sales tax because it raises taxes on middle class while lowering them for rich and poor. Make Bush-era tax cuts, including for the wealthy, permanent. Eliminate estate tax.
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