quote: President Bush believes all Americans should have access to affordable, quality health care. President Bush is working to address the root causes of rising health care costs, rather than shifting the costs to taxpayers or forcing Americans into an inflexible, one-size-fits-all bureaucratic system. The President's plan reduces the rising cost of health care; provides affordable coverage to those who need it most - low-income children and families, small businesses, the self-employed, and people who do not get health benefits through their job; and improves health care information, quality, and safety. To achieve the goal of more affordable health care, the President has:
Promote Affordable Health Care for Children
Expand Health Savings Accounts (HSAs)
Promote a Health Savings Account Tax Credit to Help Small Business Employees
Provide an Above-the-Line Deduction for Health Insurance Premiums
Allow Small Businesses to Establish Association Health Plans (AHPs)
Expand Association Health Plans
Allow Shopping for Health Coverage Across State Lines
Ensure that Each of America's Poorest Communities has a Health Center
Promoting Health Information Technology (IT)
Fighting for Medical Liability Reform
Fighting Health Care Fraud and Waste
Implementing Prescription Drug Benefit
Expanding and Improving Benefits for Seniors
Tax Deduction for Long-Term Care
Additional Tax Exemption for Home Caregivers of Family MembersImprove VA Health Facilities
Kerry:
quote:
John Kerry and John Edwards have a plan to address soaring premiums and cut Americans a break. Their plan will lower family premiums by up to $1,000 a year, cut waste from the system, lower the cost of prescription drugs to provide real relief to seniors, and use targeted tax cuts to extend affordable, high-quality coverage to 95 percent of Americans, including every child. And because John Kerry and John Edwards believe that everyone's health is equally important, they will provide all Americans with access to the same coverage that members of Congress give themselves.
Allow re-importation of safe, FDA-approved prescription drugs
End artificial barriers to generic drug competition
Require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate better prices for prescription drugs
Require transparency rules (note: …reveal the profits [Pharmacy Benefit Managers] make from the drug industry and show how much discounts are being passed on…)
quote: John Kerry and John Edwards have a plan to ignite the growth of America's high-tech economy that will help create millions of high-tech, high-wage jobs in the industries of the future such as the broadband Internet, clean energy, nanotechnology, biotechnology, and advanced manufacturing. John Kerry and John Edwards are also committed to increasing investments in areas such as K-12 math and science education and long-term, high-risk research that will help ensure America's scientific, economic and technological leadership in the 21st century.
Eliminate capital gains for long-term investments in small businesses
Extend the Research & Experimentation tax credit
Provide a tax credit to ensure that broadband access is universal and affordable
Provide broadband to all first responders by the end of 2006
Expand spectrum that is available for wireless broadband
Provide substantial research increases for clean energy, medicine, advanced manufacturing, information technology, nanotechnology, and other priorities.
Expand America's science, engineering, and technical workforce.
Reform or eliminate regulations that impede America's high-tech competitiveness.
Promote private sector investment and competition in broadband
Encourage marketplace solutions to attract broadband providers to underserved regions.
Restore integrity and honesty to science policy.
Expand support for "curiosity-driven" research and long-term, high-risk research
Devote more defense research and development to long-term research.
Use prizes to stimulate technological innovation.
Balance science and security by streamlining our visa system to facilitate scientists and students to work and study in the United States while improving our security.
quote: America's economy leads the world because our system of private enterprise rewards innovation. Entrepreneurs, scientists, and skilled workers create and apply the technologies that are changing our world. President Bush believes that Government must work to help create a new generation of American innovation and an atmosphere where innovation continues to thrive. The President also recognizes that as innovation produces new industries, we must invest in developing human capital - the skills, capabilities, and education of individuals - so people can secure these high-skilled, high-paying jobs.
Make the Research and Development Tax Credit Permanent
quote: In his first year in office, President Bush made a comprehensive, long-term energy policy a top priority. His goal was clear and far-sighted: to promote affordable, reliable, and secure energy supplies by increasing conservation, investing in new technologies, and exploring for new domestic sources of energy. That plan included over 100 specific recommendations - nearly half of which addressed conservation, renewable energy, and energy efficiency.
Initiate Environmentally Safe Exploration
Promote Natural Gas Production
Build an Alaska Natural Gas Pipeline
Promote Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG)
Continue Energy Partnerships
Help Build Refineries
Utilize Nuclear Power
Ensure Greater Electricity Reliability
Encourage Use of Efficient Technologies
Support Energy Technologies
Help in the Construction of Energy-Efficient Homes
Improve Vehicle Fuel Economy
Develop Clean Coal Technology
Promote Markets for Clean Coal Technology
Pursue FutureGen Initiative (note: public-private partnership to create the world's first zero-emissions coal-based power plant, producing electricity and hydrogen while capturing carbon dioxide.)
John Kerry and John Edwards will set a new standard of environmental excellence for America. They will honor our national treasures and pay tribute to our natural wonders, while renewing our nation's promise of clean air, clean water and a bountiful landscape for all. They recognize that we owe it to our families, our communities, and our planet to defend our environmental values and protect our environmental rights. http://www.johnkerry.com/issues/environment/
Clean up Contaminated Sites and Revitalize America’s Industrial Sites; Create Environmental Empowerment Zones.
Get Toxics Out of Our Communities.
Guarantee That Our Kids Have Access to Ball Fields and Parks.
Take on Traffic Congestion and Sprawl.
Reinvest Royalties Obtained from Extracting Resources from Public Lands Back into Protecting Our Lands and Special Places.
Require that the Federal Government Evaluate the Long-Term Economic and Environmental Costs Associated with Opening Remote Public Lands Before Such Lands Are Opened Up to New Resource Development.
Put New Teeth into Requirements that Private Companies and Individuals Who Lease Public Lands Return the Land to Its Original State After Completing Energy Development, Grazing, or Timber Operations.
Reinstate the Protection of Roadless Areas in Our National Forests, and Ban Logging in Our Rare, Old Growth Forests.
Honor the Solitude and Beauty of Wilderness Areas and Our National Parks by Keeping Snowmobiles and Jet Skis Out of Yellowstone and Other Sensitive Areas, and by Honestly Addressing Visitor and Wildlife Needs in Our National Parks.
Celebrate the Biodiversity of Our Nation, and Implement the Endangered Species Act in a Cooperative Manner That Extends the Benefits of Wildlife and Habitat Protection to Public and Private Lands.
Modernize Our Mining Laws and Provide a Fair Return to the American People for Mining Operations on Public Lands.
Plug Loopholes and Vigorously Enforce the [Clean Air Act].
Take Aggressive Action to meet Ozone and Particulate Air Quality Standards, Stop Acid Rain and Reduce Mercury Emissions.
Address Emissions that contribute to Global Warming Through a Combination of Innovative Programs that Drive Technology Change and Create Jobs.
Work with States and Cities to Tackle the Toughest Water Quality Challenges that Threaten Sensitive Rivers, Lakes, Bays, and Estuaries: Stormwater Run- Off and Sewer Overflows; and Pollution from Factory Farms and Agricultural Runoff.
Encourage the Efficient Use of Water.
Restore Damaged Watersheds.
Invest in America’s Riverfronts, Lakefronts and Coastal Communities.
posted
Does the President really have the power to do all those things? I tend to stay away from politics, but isn't a big part of all these policies what Congress and Senate have to say?
Posts: 2756 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Good question. The answer is no. He has the power to introduce initiatives into congress, and to veto or sign them into law once congress has pass them. He only has the power of persuasion with the budget. He is the commander in chief of all our military. As commander in chief, he has an ability enact presidential orders. He can nominate the judges for the Supreme Court. He chooses the people in his Cabinet, which is the group of advisors for policy. They can make bureaucratic rules for government agencies that can inact policies that congress never voted on.
Posts: 438 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
"Tom, what's your basis for thinking that designating Clear Skies an environmental program is a lie?"
Because the core of the Clear Skies -- and there's a laughably propagandistic name if I've ever heard one -- Initiative was in fact the loosening of air quality regulations built into the Clean Air Act.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
And if it can result in cleaner air when compared to the Clean Air Act results - not some mythical ideal of 100% compliance - then it can qualify as an environmental initiative.
posted
There's no mention of "cleaner" refineries at Bush's website:
quote: Help Build Refineries - President Bush will remove unnecessary bureaucratic obstacles to help build new refineries to increase domestic capacity. (emphasis added)
quote: "We need more refineries and we need less regulation out of Washington that prevents refineries from being built," [Bush] said. (emphasis added)
And, as Dick Cheney honesly pointed out, that means more pollution:
quote:Republican vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney said Sunday the United States ought to boost its oil production by expanding drilling in Alaska and building more refineries.
Cheney, who left a lucrative post with a Texas oil-services company to join the GOP ticket, suggested some environmental standards might have to be relaxed to accomplish that goal. (emphasis added)
posted
Given how many of the studies that used to be done on clean air have been discontinued or made secret by the Bush administration, we have no way of measuring how many of the President's environmental initiatives are faring beyind voluntary industry reporting. I submit that this constitutes a failure.
I am of course assuming people have bothered reading the evisceration of the Bush admin's (anti-) scientific policies by a very large coalition of prominent scientists, which cited numerous particular examples.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Also, Dag, many times companies "expand" old refineries to avoid having to bring them up to environmental standards.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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