Junior Senator (IL); President-Elect

Make government fiscally responsible & live within budget

Q: This year’s deficit will reach $455 billion. Won’t some programs you are proposing have to be eliminated?

OBAMA: Every dollar I’ve proposed, I’ve proposed an additional cut hat it matches. To give an example, we spend $15 billion a year on subsidies to insurance companies. It doesn’t help seniors get better. It’s a giveaway. I want to go through the federal budget line by line, programs that don’t work, we cut. Programs we need, we should make them work better. Once we get through this economic crisis, we’re going to have to embrace a culture of responsibility, all of us, corporations, the federal government, & individuals who may be living beyond their means.

McCAIN: I’d have an across-the-board spending freeze. I know how to save billions of dollars in defense spending. One would be the marketing assistance program. Another one would be subsidies for ethanol. I would fight for a line-item veto, and I would certainly veto every earmark pork-barrel bill. Source: 2008 third presidential debate against John McCain Oct 15, 2008

When Bush came in, we had a surplus; now we have a deficit

Q: How can we trust either of you with our money when both parties got us into this global economic crisis?

OBAMA: I understand your frustration and your cynicism. Most of the people here, you’ve got a family budget. If less money is coming in, you end up making cuts. Maybe you don’t go out to dinner as much. Maybe you put off buying a new car. That’s not what happens in Washington. And you’re right. There is a lot of blame to go around.

But I think it’s important just to remember a little bit of history. When George Bush came into office, we had surpluses. And now we have half-a-trillion-dollar deficit annually. When George Bush came into office, our national debt was around $5 trillion. It’s now over $10 trillion. We’ve almost doubled it.

And so while it’s true that nobody’s completely innocent here, we have had over the last 8 years the biggest increases in deficit spending and national debt in our history. And Sen. McCain voted for 4 out of 5 of those George Bush budgets. Source: 2008 second presidential debate against John McCain Oct 7, 2008

Middle class needs a rescue package with tax cuts

Q: What’s your plan to save people from financial ruin?

OBAMA: This is a verdict on the failed policies of the last eight years that said that we should strip away consumer protections, let the market run wild, and prosperity would rain down. Step one was a rescue package that means making sure taxpayers get their money back. The middle-class need a rescue package. That means tax cuts for the middle-class. It means help for homeowners. It means we are helping state governments set up projects that keep people in their jobs. We’ve got to fix our health care system, we’ve got to fix our energy system. You’ve got to have somebody in Washington who is thinking about the middle class and not just those who can afford to hire lobbyists.

McCAIN: I have a plan to fix this problem and it has to do with energy independence. We’ve got to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don’t like us. We have to keep Americans’ taxes low. All Americans’ taxes low. Source: 2008 second presidential debate against John McCain Oct 7, 2008

Bailout will unfreeze credit & allow businesses to function

Q: Which parts of the $700B bailout will help people?

OBAMA: Let me tell you what’s in the rescue package for you. Right now, the credit markets are frozen up and what that means is that small businesses can’t get loans. If they can’t get a loan, that means that they can’t make payroll. If they can’t make payroll, then they may end up having to shut their doors and lay people off. And if you imagine just one company trying to deal with that, now imagine a million companies all across the country. So it could end up having an adverse effect on everybody, and that’s why we had to take action. But we shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

McCAIN: This rescue package means we will stabilize markets, we will shore up these institutions. But it’s not enough. That’s why we’re going to have to go out into the housing market and buy up these bad loans and we’re going to have to stabilize home values, and that way, Americans can realize the American dream and stay in their home. Source: 2008 second presidential debate against John McCain Oct 7, 2008

Every citizen should save energy & resources

Q: What economic sacrifices will Americans have to make?

OBAMA: Each and every one of us can start thinking about how can we save energy. And one of the things I want to do is make sure we’re providing incentives so that you can buy a fuel efficient car that’s made right here in the U.S. not in Japan or South Korea, making sure that you are able to weatherize your home or make your business more fuel efficient.

McCAIN: Some of those programs may not grow as much as we would like for them to, but we can establish priorities with full consultation, not done behind closed doors & shoving earmarks in the middle of the night that we don’t even know about until months later. Source: 2008 second presidential debate against John McCain Oct 7, 2008

FactCheck: National debt up from $6T to $10T under Bush

Obama said, “When George Bush came into office, our national debt was around $5 trillion. It’s now over $10 trillion.” Actually, it was closer to $6 trillion when Bush took office. On Jan. 22, 2001 (two days after Bush was sworn in) the debt stood at $5.728 trillion. On Sept. 30, 2008, it was $10.025 trillion. Source: FactCheck.org on 2008 second presidential debate Oct 7, 2008

Bottom-up economics instead of trickle-down economics

Obama explained that a healthy economy is a bottom-up economy, not a top-down economy dependent on trickle-down economics. In a bottom-up economy, the rules of business and government are fair and apply to all. There is a level playing field. In such an environment, people’s enthusiasm and motivations are maximized. They feel that their personal success will be determined by their hard work and effort, not by who they know or who they are related to. Obama believes that they key to a growing and prosperous economy is a motivated workforce that is engaged and constantly thinking about how it can improve itself, its company’s products and services, and its country.

Obama believes that all will benefit from the system he envisions, that Wall Street & Main Street are intertwined, that you can’t have successful securities investing without successful companies to invest in, and you can’t have successful companies without motivated engaged workers Source: Obamanomics, by John R. Talbott, p. 18-19 Jul 1, 2008

Focus on economic justice instead of macroeconomic policy

The true genius of America, a faith—a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles; that we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm; that we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door; that we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe; that we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution, and that our votes will be counted—at least most of the time.

These words are from Barack Obama’s major economic policy speech on Feb. 13, 2008. It had a completely different focus than the macroeconomic issues we are used to hearing discussed in Washington. Rather, he focused his remarks on what, for him, is the most pressing need today in America, the need for economic justice. To a great degree, much of Barack Obama’s platform for America is about a singular issue, economic justice. Source: Obamanomics, by John R. Talbott, p. 29-31 Jul 1, 2008

We need both bottom-up politics and bottom-up economics

The power of bottom-up economics, according to Obama, is that it is an economically just system that encourages everyone to work hard, to educate themselves, and to be their most productive because it fairly rewards those who do so.

All are equally motivated to excel, because they know the system will treat them fairly and reward their hard work and effort.

Obama wrote, It taught me that ordinary people can do extraordinary things when given the chance. Change does not happen from the top down, but from the bottom-up, because the American people stand ready for change. Just like we need bottom-up politics, we need bottom-up economics. We need to think about working people. Source: Obamanomics, by John R. Talbott, p. 34 Jul 1, 2008

OpEd: Hope translates into economic opportunity

I’m not talking about blind optimism here—the almost willing ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don’t think about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about something more substantial, It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. Hope—Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope.

Many of us remember these striking words as the keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic Nominating Convention. If there is one word associated with Barack Obama, from all of his campaigns, speeches and books, it would have to be hope. From an economic perspective, the word hope easily translates into economic opportunity. Without economic opportunity, there is no hope. Source: Obamanomics, by John R. Talbott, p. 51 Jul 1, 2008

Clinton left behind a surplus; Bush squandered it

We could have done something to end our addiction to oil, but instead we continued down a path that that funds both sides of the war on terror, endangers our planet, and has left Americans struggling with $4 a gallon gasoline. We could have invested in innovation and rebuilt our crumbling roads and bridges, but instead we’ve spent hundreds of billions of dollars fighting a war in Iraq that should’ve never been authorized and never been waged.

Worse yet, the price-tag for these failures is being passe to our children. The Clinton Administration left behind a surplus, but this Administration squandered it. We face budget deficits in the hundreds of billions and our nearly ten trillion dollars in debt. We’ve borrowed billions from countries like China to finance needless tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and an unnecessary war, and yet Sen. McCain is explicitly running to continue and expand these policies, without a realistic plan to pay for it. I want to take us in a new and better direction. Source: Speech in Flint, MI, in Change We Can Believe In, p.247-8 Jun 15, 2008

A different economic approach vs. McCain’s 4 more years

A: If they have a 401(k), then they are going to see those taxes deferred, and they’re going to pay ordinary income when they finally cash out. So, that’s a phony argument. You know, as I travel around the country, what I’m absolutely convinced of is that people recognize that if only 1% of the population is doing well, when we’ve got wage and incomes for the average worker actually going down during a period of economic expansion, much less economic recession, that something’s being mismanaged. And they want a different approach. And that’s what we’re going to be offering them. John McCain is essentially offering four more years of the same policies that got us into this rut that we’re in now. Source: CNN Late Edition: 2008 presidential series with Wolf Blitzer May 11, 2008