Provide Fast Acting Stimulus to Help Stave Off Recession, Including Extended Unemployment Insurance and Energy Assistance for Virginia Families: Over two months ago, Hillary called on Congress and the President to take action on fast-acting measures to help jumpstart our ailing economy. While she is heartened that Congress has agreed to provide tax rebates to working families and our seniors, families in Virginia and across the country need more than tax rebates to address their economic problems. That's why as part of her stimulus plan, Hillary called for extending unemployment insurance and for extending emergency assistance to help offset rising energy and gas prices. Hillary's emergency energy assistance plan would provide 750,000 Virginia families with an average of $650 in energy assistance.Offer a Comprehensive Solution to the Housing Crisis: Hillary believes that we cannot turn our economy around without addressing the housing crisis. She is the only candidate with a comprehensive plan to end the foreclosure crisis and help restore stability to the housing market. Hillary has called on the mortgage industry to observe a foreclosure moratorium of at least 90 days on subprime, owner-occupied homes, and a 5-year freeze in the monthly rate on subprime adjustable rate mortgages. Hillary would also provide $30 billion to states to help at risk families and communities weather the foreclosure crisis. To provide states with additional tools to fight foreclosures, Hillary has introduced the Mortgage Refinancing Initiative Act to empower state housing agencies to use $10 billion to replace unworkable mortgages with stable, affordable loans. More than 16,000 Virginia households received foreclosure notices last year. Hillary's plan would help thousands of families in the state hold onto the American dream.
Provide Quality Affordable Healthcare to All Virginia Families: No One Will Be Left Out. Hillary's American Health Choices Plan will provide quality, affordable health care to all Americans - including the more than 1 million people without insurance in Virginia. Her plan will also benefit the many people who have coverage today but could be just one pink slip away from losing their coverage. In contrast, Senator Obama's plan would leave at least 15 million people without health insurance, including 330,000 people in Virginia.
Help Virginia Families Save and Invest for their Future: Hillary's American Retirement Accounts plan will give all Americans a new opportunity to save for retirement, and provide generous matching tax cuts to help middle-class families save. Hillary's plan would offer 2 million Virginia families up to $1000 in matching tax cuts to help them save. If a Virginia family saves just $80 a month, they could, over a 40-year career, build a retirement nest-egg of $275,000.
Make College Affordable for Virginia Families: Students in Virginia have the seventh-highest level of student debt in the country. Fifty-six percent of Virginia graduates graduate with an average of $18,000 in debt. Hillary's college tax credit would provide at least 425,000 Virginia college students a tax credit of up to $3,500.
Help Modernize Virginia's Infrastructure and Reduce Traffic Congestion: Hillary's infrastructure plan will help Virginia inspect and repair critical infrastructure, expand mass transit, finance light rail projects, and reduce traffic congestion. Hillary understands that modernizing the state's infrastructure will improve quality of life and strengthen the economy.
Lower the Financial Burdens on Caregivers in Virginia: Hillary's long-term care plan will provide generous tax cuts to seniors, people with disabilities and their families to offset the growing cost of care. Hillary's new $3000 Caregiver Tax Credit will benefit 128,000 Virginia seniors, people with disabilities and their families.
Senator Clinton unveiled the tangible benefits her economic plan will provide to Virginia's working families today and it's plain to see...
May I add the following, LiberalPi:
John Rother, Director of Policy and Strategy, American Association of Retired Persons (AARP): "Senator Clinton's long-term care initiative is both innovative and responsive to the undeniable burdens chronically ill and disabled Americans of all ages and their families face. By focusing on patients, their family caregivers and the need to train and expand a high quality workforce, she's prescribing a thoughtful solution to a problem that has gone unaddressed for far too long. We commend the Senator for putting it on the table and hope all other candidates will follow her lead."Val J. Halamandaris, President, National Association of Home Care and Hospice: "Senator Hillary Clinton is to be commended for offering a bold long-term home care initiative which will help millions of infirm seniors and disabled persons preserve their health, independence and freedom. For too long there has been little help for infirm seniors and disabled persons who suffer from complex medical problems. Her proposal addresses the problems they face every day. It should be obvious to everyone that this is but a harbinger of the great things she will achieve on behalf of the most vulnerable Americans."
Larry Minnix, President and CEO of the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging: "I applaud Senator Clinton for highlighting the important issue of long-term care during the Presidential campaign. This is an issue that voters overwhelmingly care about and one which deserves serious national dialogue. Family caregivers are the cornerstone of long-term care in our country and greatly need financial assistance to continue providing care. Senator Clinton's proposal to improve the workforce by offering new resources to states to design and implement initiatives aimed at attracting new individuals into the long-term care field and improving their training and performance is essential to ensuring that our country has an adequate workforce that can accommodate the needs of our nation's growing senior population."
Senator Clinton, once again, proves that as the pragmatist, as the change agent, she is the candidate who has a plan, a specific plan that will improve the life of my parents.
The Economic Policy Institute, which is a labor, middle class focused economic think tank, said about Obama's plan:
Obama's disappointing foreclosure plan stems from the centrist politics of his three chief economic advisers and his campaign's ties to Wall Street institutions opposed to increased financial regulation. David Cutler and Jeffrey Liebman are both Harvard economists who served in the Clinton Administration, and they work on market-oriented solutions to social welfare issues. Cutler advocates improving healthcare through financial incentives; Liebman, the partial privatization of Social Security
So, while many of us criticized the Clintons on corporate driven policy, note where two prominent economic advisers pushing for corporate driven policy went....to the Obama campaign.
Back in 1995, my father, then 80, developed something called Guillaim Barre Syndrome and within 48 hours he was paralyzed from the neck down, the myelin sheath on his nerves having been destroyed by his immune system. I was working for the government in DC at the time and wasn't even aware that I could use the Family Medical Leave Act to help my parents until my boss reminded me of it's availability.
In the beginning, my father's possible recovery was discounted by a doctor and Dad was going to be shipped off to another city, away from my mother, possibly for the rest of his life. But I used the Family Medical Leave Act and the time that it gave me to help my father with his slow but eventual recovery. That time from my job gave me time to be at the hospital advocating that my father be admitted to the hospital rehab unit and given a chance for recovery near his wife. Eventually, I was able to convince enough people to admit my Dad there and then watched him work for two years, while his myelin grew back, and he eventually returned to walking and living a normal life.
I've been waiting for many years to thank Bill Clinton in person for enacting a law that gave me, a caregiver to my parents, the time to help my parents heal and return to a normal life. And I got that chance today. I shook his hand, told him my story, and he said he was glad that my Mom and Dad had been helped and even told me that Hillary had worked on extending that same coverage to military families!!
To me this represents quantifiable change and I believe Senator Clinton's plans for working families such as mine is what I continue to need for my family and my Mom and Dad.
He's most assuredly to the right of Hillary on economic policy.
Just wondering why it is there's so much there about Obama and very little about Clinton, and even though Clinton clearly has far more contributions from big monied interests she's getting a pass from this website while it nibbles away at Obama.
Then you make a rather startling statement about Obama being to the right of Hillary on economic policy. I'd really like to know upon what you base that.
I'm not making this up, more I went to do my own homework and was shocked at what I dug up. I really was for in my head, Hillary was bought and paid for by special interests so I really didn't expect to find Obama worse, but that's what I found. Again, I understand this policy but this is no spin, if I have to vote for Hillary I will assuredly have to hold my nose and this is why:
They both are horrific on insourcing. Insourcing is manipulation of US immigration policy, extensive use of guest worker Visas to labor arbitrage and is very much a corporate strategic agenda item. NASSCOM in particular has these methods as part of their business plans:
Hillary Clinton, India's Best Representative
Is Obama for Change or Just More of the Same?
and then overall:
Presidential Candidates and H-1B
Both of them promised corporate lobbyists, Silicon valley executives to labor arbitrage Professional workers through more guest worker Visas, which are well documented as an offshore outsourcing vehicle, as well as a labor arbitrage, age discrimination method. Neigther one of them will co-sponsor S.1035 (Dick Durbin) which would reform the program and stop some of the legal loopholes with which to displace American professionals.
More more information, I cannot think of a more damning piece of evidence right now than This embedded video.
I base it on digging into the actual policy as deep as I can, the voting record, the money (hedge fund managers like Obama and I suspect it is because of those personal retirement accounts for one), position statements, policy statements.
I do not like either one for both seem hell bent on hurting working Professionals through insourcing, but when Obama fever came along, I started digging through the other trade, economic and labor issues and was positively shocked to conclude that Hillary was more Progressive than Obama.
I want the least trade, economic disaster I can get for the candidate and I realized that Obama sure isn't it here and because people are just mesmerized by the rhetoric, I am posting his positions because they are hard to find.
No, I don't want him to win because of these policy positions. I think it's worse for the US economically, working America economically even though I assess Hillary as being far from ideal.
Oops, finally I believe Obama will be slightly worse (if that's possible) than Hillary on insourcing from various position statements he has made and also because he walked out of Google with his "technology strategy" in hand. Google is being sued for age discrimination.
I understand your concerns. That's why I was for Edwards before he bowed out. He was the only one whose progressive credentials with regard to trade and labor I trusted; however, I find a certain venality in Hillary which I have not seen in Obama. I shudder when I see things like Bill's little junket to Kazakhstan recently and his embrace of its leadership. There's a pursuit of wealth on both Hillary and Bill's parts that bothers me.
At this point I have to go with the candidate I believe will be most approachable about and most likely to promote fair trade, reform of the H-1B visa process, and other protections of American workers. It's a close call, neither is perfect, but I think Obama is the most educable and the most likely to change things for the better.