–bbigelow@my.apsu.edu
If reelected, President Barack Obama has set the goal of creating 1 million “new manufacturing jobs by the end of 2016” and so far has overseen 32 consecutive months of job growth and has added “5.4 million private sector jobs, including nearly 479,000 manufacturing jobs since January 2010,” according to his official campaign website.
Under Obama, Obamacare will endure.
His health care reform has ensured that insurance companies cannot put a cap on coverage or cancel coverage due to illness; it eliminates gender disparities in cost of coverage and eliminates discrimination against individuals with pre-existing conditions, and mandates access to recommended preventative care — such as birth control, mammograms, and cancer screenings. Obama will work to protect Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose and opposes defunding of Planned Parenthood.
Obama intends to implement federal budget spending cuts and revenue increases that will reduce the federal deficit by “more than $4 trillion” over the next 10 years and includes $2.50 in “spending cuts for every dollar in revenue increases … bringing annual domestic spending as a share of the economy to its lowest level in 50 years,” according to his website.
Obama is drawing down troops in Afghanistan and has a plan in place to end the war there in 2014 and to use half the money saved from ending the war to reinvest in infrastructure — including roads, bridges, runways and schools here in America — and reinvest the other half toward reducing the national debt.
According to his website, Obama intends to “cut net oil imports in half between 2008 and 2020, lowering imports by 5.5 million barrels per day,” thereby reducing our reliance on foreign oil imports “to its lowest level in almost three decades.”
He also supports an “all of the above” strategy for domestic energy production, including a reliance on domestic oil, natural gas, clean coal, wind, solar, biofuels, and nuclear energy resources.
Obama has also proposed stricter standards to decrease pollution from new power plants and a goal to generate 80 percent of U.S. electricity from cleaner sources by 2035 — including natural gas, clean coal, wind and solar.
Obama wants to see the U.S. “lead the world in college
graduates by 2020” and, to that end, will cut the “growth of college tuition and fees in half over the next 10 years,” saving students thousand of dollars a year, according to his website.
He is also dedicated to attracting 100,000 new math and science teachers to improve U.S. performance in science, technology, engineering and math, as well as help the states and local governments to save the jobs of “hundreds of thousands of teachers” and provide the resources to attract a higher caliber of teachers while raising education standards.
Obama wants to double American exports over the next five years through a program of “promoting U.S. goods and removing trade barriers, expanding access to credit” and encouraging economic growth, according to his official website, and intends to eliminate tax breaks for companies that outsource jobs overseas and to create incentives for companies who create jobs domestically.
