The next person on the voting ballot for president is current President Barack Obama for the Democratic Party.
HealthCare- On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, putting in place comprehensive reforms that improve access to affordable health coverage for everyone and protect consumers from abusive insurance company practices. The law allows all Americans to make health insurance choices that work for them while guaranteeing access to care for our most vulnerable, and provides new ways to bring down costs and improve quality of care. For too long, too many hard working Americans paid the price for policies that handed free rein to insurance companies. President Obama’s health reform law gives hard-working families the security they deserve. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, 3.1 million more young adults have health insurance on their parent’s plan, three million seniors have received a 50 percent discount on their prescription drugs, and millions of Americans now have access to no-cost preventive services to help them stay healthy. Abusive insurance practices are becoming a thing of the past. Additionally, the Affordable Care Act helps small businesses with the cost of providing health insurance for their employees and helps doctors and other health providers care for their patients more effectively.
Education- Participation in high-quality early learning programs—like Head Start, public and private pre-K, and childcare—will provide children from disadvantaged backgrounds with a strong start and a foundation for school success. These programs also generate a significant return on investment for society; numerous economic studies have documented a rate of return as high as 18 percent on the program investment each year because of a reduced need for spending on other services, such as remedial education, grade repetition, and special education, as well as increased productivity and earnings for these children as adults. President Obama’s comprehensive agenda invests in and strengthens early childhood education for our nation’s youngest children. It helps to prevent achievement gaps before they start, and invests from an early age in children as our most critical national resource. In today’s global economy, a high-quality education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity—it is a prerequisite to success. Because economic progress and educational achievement are inextricably linked, educating every American student to graduate from high school prepared for college and for a career is a national imperative. The President has articulated a goal for America to once again lead the world in college completion by the year 2020, and all of President Obama’s education efforts aim toward this overarching objective.
To create an economy built to last, we need to provide every child with a complete and competitive education that will enable them to succeed in a global economy based on knowledge and innovation. To provide a high-quality education to all American children, President Obama has advanced reforms around four key objectives:
- Higher standards and better assessments that will prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace
- Ambitious efforts to recruit, prepare, develop, and advance effective teachers and principals, especially in the classrooms where they are most needed
- Smarter data systems to measure student growth and success, and help educators improve instruction
- New attention and a national effort to turn around our lowest-achieving schools.
Immigration- President Obama continues to reiterate his deep commitment to fixing the broken immigration system and outlined his vision for a 21st century immigration policy:
- Responsibility by the federal government to secure our borders:Today, our borders are more secure than at any time in the past several decades, and the Administration continues to refine and strengthen its strategy. Enforcement resources should be focused on preventing those who would do our nation harm from entering our country.
- Accountability for businesses that break the law by undermining American workers and exploiting undocumented workers: Employers who deliberately hire and exploit undocumented workers must be held accountable. At the same time, we must give employers who want to play by the rules a reliable way to verify that their employees are here legally.
- Strengthening our economic competiveness by creating a legal immigration system that reflects our values and diverse needs: Our immigration laws should continue to reunify families and encourage individuals we train in our world-class institutions to stay and develop new technologies and industries in the United States rather than abroad. The law should stop punishing innocent young people whose parents brought them here illegally and give those young men and women a chance to stay in this country if they serve in the military or pursue higher education. A smart 21st century system should also provide farmers a legal way to hire the workers they rely on year after year, and it should improve procedures for employers who seek to hire foreign workers for jobs if U.S. workers are not available.
- Responsibility from people who are living in the United States illegally: Those people living here illegally must also be held accountable for their actions and get on the right side of the law by registering and undergoing national security and criminal background checks, paying taxes and a penalty, and learning English before they can get in line to become eligible for citizenship. Being a citizen of this country comes not only with rights but also with fundamental responsibilities. We can create a pathway for legal status that is fair and reflects our values.
Taxes-
Tax Cuts for Small Businesses
President Obama firmly believes that entrepreneurs and small businesses are engines of economic growth, and that their investments and innovation have been at the forefront of our economic recovery. That’s why he and his Administration have focused on strengthening small businesses by signing into law 18 tax cuts for small businesses. These tax credits are helping small business hire and grow, provide affordable health insurance to employees, and invest in new machinery and equipment.
Tax Reform
The tax code has become increasingly complicated and unfair. Under today’s tax laws, those who can afford expert advice can avoid paying their fair share and interests with the most connected lobbyists can get exemptions and special treatment written into our tax code. While many of the tax incentives serve important purposes, taken together the tax expenditures in the law are inefficient, unfair, duplicative, or even unnecessary.
That is why President Obama has called on Congress to enact comprehensive tax reform that meets the following five principles:
- 1. Lower tax rates.
The tax system should be simplified and work for all Americans with lower individual and corporate tax rates and fewer brackets.
- 2. Cut inefficient and unfair tax breaks.
Cut tax breaks that are inefficient, unfair, or both so that the American people and businesses spend less time and less money each year filing taxes and cannot avoid their responsibility by gaming the system. This includes cutting tax preferences for high-income households; eliminating special tax breaks for oil and gas companies; closing loopholes for investment fund managers; and eliminating benefits for corporate jet owners.
- 3. Cut the deficit.
Cut the deficit by $1.5 trillion over the next decade through tax reform, including the expiration of tax cuts for single taxpayers making over $200,000 and married couples making over $250,000.
- 4. Increase job creation and growth in the United States.
Make America stronger at home and more competitive globally by increasing the incentive to work and invest in the United States.
- 5. Observe the Buffett Rule.
As multi-billionaire Warren Buffet has pointed out, his average tax rate is lower than his secretary’s. No household making over $1 million annually should pay a smaller share of their total income in taxes than middle-class families.
President Barack Obama's vice president is Joe Biden.