Can't do anything at home with $12 billion a month on Iraq
The fact that we're spending $12 billion every month in Iraq means that we can't engage in the kind of infrastructure improvements that are going to make us more competitive, we can't deliver on the kinds of health care reforms that Clinton and
I are looking for. McCain is willing to have these troops over there for 100 years. The notion that we would sustain that kind of effort and neglect not only making us more secure here at home, more competitive here at home, allow our economy to sink.
Source: 2008 Democratic debate at University of Texas in Austin
Feb 21, 2008
Protect consumers with Credit Card Bill of Rights
Create a Credit Card Rating System to Improve Disclosure:Provide consumers an easily identifiable 1-star to 5-star ranking of credit cards, based on the card's features. Credit card companies will be required to display the rating on all
application and contract materials.
Establish a Credit Card Bill of Rights to Protect Consumers:Obama will create a Credit Card Bill of Rights to protect consumers. The Obama plan will:
Ban Unilateral Changes
Apply Interest Rate
Increases Only to Future Debt
Prohibit Interest on Fees
Prohibit "Universal Defaults"
Require Prompt and Fair Crediting of Cardholder Payments
Cap Outlandish Interest Rates on Payday Loans and Improve Disclosure:Obama supports
extending a 36% interest cap to all Americans. Obama will require lenders to provide clear and simplified information about loan fees, payments and penalties, and he'll require them to provide this information during the application process.
Ensure More Accountability in the Subprime Mortgage Industry:Obama introduced comprehensive legislation over a year ago to protect consumers against abusive lending practices. Obama's STOP FRAUD Act provides the first federal definition of
mortgage fraud, increases funding for law enforcement, and creates new criminal penalties for mortgage fraud.
Create a Universal Mortgage Credit:Obama will create a 10% universal mortgage credit to provide tax relief to homeowners who do not
itemize. This credit will provide an average of $500 to 10 million homeowners, the majority of whom earn less than $50,000 per year.
Mandate Accurate Loan Disclosure: Obama will create a Homeowner Obligation Made Explicit (HOME) score, which
will provide potential borrowers with a simplified, standardized borrower metric (similar to APR) for home mortgages. The HOME score will allow individuals to easily compare various mortgage products and understand the full cost of the loan.
Bush stimulus plan leaves out seniors & unemployed
We heard the President say he has a stimulus plan to boost our economy, but we know his plan leaves out seniors and fails to expand unemployment insurance, and we know it was George Bush's Washington that let the banks and financial institutions
run amok, and take our economy down this dangerous road. What we need to do now is put more money in the pockets of workers and seniors, and expand unemployment insurance for more people and more time. And I have a plan that to do just that.
Source: Response to 2008 State of the Union address
Jan 28, 2008
Voted against limiting credit to 30%, because 30% too high
Clinton and Obama battled over their votes on bankruptcy bills and an amendment to cap interest charged on credit, at 30%. Obama claimed, "I thought 30% potentially was too high of a ceiling."
Obama did vote against--and Clinton voted for--an amendment
that would have placed a 30% cap on the interest rate that could be charged on any extension of credit. The amendment failed by a vote of 74 to 24 in 2005. When the amendment came up for a vote, Obama was standing next to Sen. Paul Sarbanes,
D-MD, the senior Democrat on the banking committee and the leader of those opposing the landmark bill, which would make it harder for Americans to get rid of debt.
As for whether the 30% cap was too high, that's certainly a matter of opinion.
Sen. Mark Dayton of Minnesota, sponsor of the amendment, said on the Senate floor that such a cap "is still consumer abuse" but is much better than rates of more than 300%, which he said were being charged by some loan operations in the country.
Account for every single dollar for new proposed programs
Q: You have some $50 billion worth of new programs that you cannot account for.
A: We account for every single dollar that we propose. This is one of the things that's happened during the course of this campaign, that there's a set of assertions made b
Clinton and her husband, that are not factually accurate. Part of what the people are looking for right now is somebody who's going to solve problems and not resort to the same typical politics that we've seen in Washington. That is something that
I hear all across the country. So when Clinton says I wasn't opposed to the war from the start or says it's a fairytale that I opposed the war, that is simply not true. Clinton asserts that I said that the Republicans had better economic policies since
1980. That is not the case. The viewers are concerned about is who's actually going to help the get health care, how are they going to get their kids going to college, and that's the kind of campaign I've tried to run.
Help the homeowners actually living in their homes
It is important to make sure that we're not helping out the speculators, but instead are helping out the homeowners who are actually living in their homes, who have the capacity to make the payments if they're not seeing a huge increase in their mortgage
payments. But understand this, this is not new. We have a history in this country of preying on low-income peoples because they don't have access to banks. The Community Reinvestment Act is oftentimes not enforced as it should be. We've got to open up
bank branches. We've got to give people access to financing so that they're not going to a payday loan operation. I two years ago introduced a provision that would eliminate predatory lending, something that I had already helped to get passed at the
state level. We've got to give ordinary working people access to financing. Part of the reason that they are borrowing on their homes, they're borrowing on credit cards, is that the banks and financial institutions have dominated policy in Washington.
OBAMA: When we talked a while back, we talked about the bankruptcy bill, which had been pushed by the banks and the financial institutions, that said, basically, it will be harder for folks who have been lured into these teaser rates and then see their
credit cards go up to 30%, that they would have a tougher time getting out of bankruptcy. In the last debate, Clinton said she voted for it but hoped that it wouldn't pass. Now, I don't understand that approach to legislation.
CLINTON: I regretted
voting for the bankruptcy bill and I was happy that it didn't get into law. By 2005, there was another run at a bankruptcy reform, motivated by the credit card companies and the other big lenders. I opposed that bill. There was a particular amendment
that is very telling. It was an amendment to prohibit credit card companies from charging more than 30% interest. It was one of the biggest lobbyist victories on that very bad bill that the bankruptcy bill represented.
Part of the reason that Kuwait and others are able to come in and purchase, or at least bail out, some of our financial institutions is because we don't have an energy policy. We are sending close to a billion dollars a day. A realistic plan is
going to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and to invest in solar & wind & biodiesel. That would make a substantial difference in our balance of payments, and that would make a substantial difference in terms of their capacity to purchase our assets.
Source: 2008 Democratic debate in Las Vegas
Jan 15, 2008
Bush & GOP dug budget hole; need years to dig out
Q: Would it be a priority of your administration to balance the federal budget every year?
A: Over the last seven years, what we've seen is an economy that's out of balance because of the policies of George Bush and the Republicans in Congress.
Not only do we have fiscal problems, but we've got growing inequality. People are working harder for less and they're seeing costs go up. So what I want to do is get the long-term fundamentals right. That means that we are investing in education
& infrastructure, structuring fair trade deals, and also ending the war in Iraq. That is money that can be applied at home for critical issues.
Q: So a priority to balance the federal budget, or not?
A: We are not going to be able to dig ourselves out
of that hole in 1 or 2 years. But if we can get on a path of sustained growth, end the war in Iraq, end some of the special interest loopholes and earmarks that have been clogging up the system, then I think we can return to a path of a balanced budget.
Save $150 billion in tax cuts for people who don't need them
Every proposal I've put forward during this campaign we have paid for, and we have specified where that money is going to come from. Let's just look at our tax code because it's a great example of how we could provide relief to ordinary citizens who are
struggling to get by. Right now we've got a whole host of corporate loopholes and tax havens. There's a building in the Cayman Islands that houses supposedly 12,000 US-based corporations. That's either the biggest building in the world or the biggest tax
scam in the world, and we know which one it is. If we close some of those loopholes, we've put forward tax relief plans, that will not only restore fairness to our tax code, but it also puts money into the pockets of hard-working Americans who need it
right now, who will spend it, and will actually improve our economic growth over time, particularly at a time when we're seeing a credit crunch. But it requires leadership from the white house that restores that sense that we're all in this together.
Take China "to the mat" about currency manipulation
Q: You had said that if China is actually manipulating their currency, the US needs to "take them to the mat." What exactly did you mean by that?
A: We have legislation that says that if, in fact, they are manipulating their currency--and
I think there's no dispute that they are--that we need to take strong action. It's in the Banking Committee. I will say that it's actually a blunt tool. I'd prefer not doing this legislatively.
The problem is we've had a president that has shown no leadership on it. So when I am in the White House, I will meet directly with the Chinese leadership and indicate we have to restore balance.
And, by the way, we have to mobilize our allies, such as the European Union, to have that conversation with us. This is an imbalance that is not good for any economy over time. It's not sustainable, the trade imbalances that we have.
In a 2005 commencement address, Obama described the conservative philosophy of government as "to give everyone one big refund on their government, divvy it up by individual portions, in the form of tax breaks, hand it out, and encourage everyone to
use their share to go buy their own health care, their own retirement plan, their own child care, their own education, and so on. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society. But in our past there has been another term for it,
Social Darwinism, every man or woman for him or herself. It's a tempting idea, because it doesn't require much thought or ingenuity." Obama has rejected this free market vision
of government, preferring to see the power of the state as something that can serve the public interest. According to Obama, "We're going to put more money into education than we have. WE have to invest in human capital."
Regulate financial instruments to protect home mortgages
Q: [to Dodd]: The Fed lowered the discount rate for banks to address the mortgage crisis. Should they lower rates for everyone else?
DODD: Yes, but we also need more liquidity in the market. It has seized up. You can't get a mortgage in America today.
OBAMA: We do need more liquidity, but we're going to have to not only help home owners who are going to be losing their homes as a consequence of this; we're going to have to make sure that we've got the kinds of tough regulation when it comes to
financial instruments to make sure that people who have saved and are trying to get their own home for the first time are not hoodwinked out of it. And, unfortunately, the reason that we haven't had tougher regulation in part goes back to the issue of
lobbying. This is where special interests have been driving the agenda. We have not had the kinds of consumer protections that are in place. That's why, when we have this debate about lobbying, we have to remind ourselves it has very real consequences.
Government regulation needed for when markets fail
In the era of George Bush's running up huge federal deficits, Obama advocated fiscal restraints, calling for pay-as-you-go government. He waxed on about the power of the free market to create wealth and change lives. But he also had an afterthought on a
market-based economy straight from liberal economist Paul Krugman: "Sometimes markets fail, and that's when labor laws and government regulation are necessary correctives." In other words, he was saying that capitalism is magnificent, but it does have
its drawbacks. It would be hard for anyone to argue with such a balanced statement. "Obama figures out ways to present himself like a conservative to conservatives."
Said [one advisor]. "He has the whole venture capital industry here in Chicago, nothing but Republicans, thinking he is their champion. He has supported entrepreneurship. It is a pro-growth message."
We were told by our President that we could fight two wars, increase our military budget by 74%, spend more on education, initiate a prescription drug plan, have tax cuts, all at the same time. We were told by Congress that they could make up for lost
revenue by cutting government waste.
The result is the most precarious budget situation we have seen in years. We now have an annual budget deficit of almost $300 billion, not counting more than $180 billion we borrow every year from the Social
Security Trust Fund.
It is not the debt that is most troubling. The bulk of the debt is a direct result of the President's tax cuts, 47.4% of which went to the top 5% income bracket.
We can eliminate tax credits that have outlived their usefulness &
close loopholes that let corporations get away without paying taxes. We can restore a law that was in place during the Clinton presidency--called Paygo--that prohibits money from leaving the treasury without some way of compensating for the lost revenue.
Obama believes that there is no such thing as a "jobless recovery." When millions of Americans aren't working, neither are the Bush Administration's economic policies.
As US Senator, Obama will champion policies that get our economy moving and people working instead of short-sighted tax-cuts for the rich that have failed to spark a recovery.
Source: Campaign website, ObamaForIllinois.com
May 2, 2004
Supports federal programs to protect rural economy
Our rural communities are the backbone of Illinois. Yet, factories have closed, jobs have disappeared, and homes and farms have been foreclosed upon. Effective federal programs are necessary to protect the rural economy.
Source: Campaign website, ObamaForIllinois.com, ?On The Issues?
May 2, 2004
Voted NO on paying down federal debt by rating programs' effectiveness.
Amendment intends to pay down the Federal debt and eliminate government waste by reducing spending on programs rated ineffective by the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART).
Proponents recommend voting YES because:
My amendment says we are going to take about $18 billion as a strong signal from the Congress that we want to support effective programs and we want the taxpayer dollars spent in a responsible way. My amendment doesn't take all of the $88 billion for the programs found by PART, realizing there may be points in time when another program is not meeting its goals and needs more money. So that flexibility is allowed in this particular amendment. It doesn't target any specific program.
Almost worse than being rated ineffective, we have programs out there that have made absolutely no effort at all to measure their results. I believe these are the worst offenders. In the following years, I hope Congress will look at those programs to create accountability.
Opponents recommend voting NO because:
The effect of this amendment will simply be to cut domestic discretionary spending $18 billion. Understand the programs that have been identified in the PART program are results not proven. Here are programs affected: Border Patrol, Coast Guard search and rescue, high-intensity drug trafficking areas, LIHEAP, rural education, child abuse prevention, and treatment. If there is a problem in those programs, they ought to be fixed. We ought not to be cutting Border Patrol, Coast Guard search and rescue, high-intensity drug trafficking areas, LIHEAP, rural education, and the rest. I urge a "no" vote.
Voted NO on $40B in reduced federal overall spending.
Vote to pass a bill that reduces federal spending by $40 billion over five years by decreasing the amount of funds spent on Medicaid, Medicare, agriculture, employee pensions, conservation, and student loans. The bill also provides a down-payment toward hurricane recovery and reconstruction costs.
Reference: Work, Marriage, and Family Promotion Reconciliation Act;
Bill S. 1932
; vote number 2005-363
on Dec 21, 2005
Get minorities into home ownership & global marketplace.
Obama adopted the CBC principles:
The CBC is focused on economic empowerment issues including:
New Markets and Small and Minority Business Development. The CBC will seek to increase opportunities for minority and small and disadvantaged businesses by expanding contracting opportunities in the public and private sectors, increasing access to capital, creating tax incentives for capital improvements, removing outdated and restrictive regulatory barriers, and streamlining and enhancing procurement tools to encourage minority and small business utilization.
Trade and Global Economic Empowerment.
The CBC will work to ensure that the benefits of the dynamic global marketplace extend to minority businesses, and Africa and developing countries. To this end, the CBC will propose and support trade and investment initiatives designed to bridge the global digital divide, create jobs, improve infrastructure, promote sustainable development, and raise living and work standards for people of color around the globe. Moreover, the CBC will work to ensure that America’s international trade agenda and priorities also meet these goals.
Increasing Affordable Housing Opportunities. The CBC’s goal is to increase the nation’s homeownership rates. Home ownership is one of the best wealth creation vehicles for minority families. We will work with lending institutions and community organizations to ensure that minorities are afforded every opportunity to realize the dream of owning a home.
Source: Congressional Black Caucus press release 01-CBC10 on Jan 6, 2001
Require full disclosure about subprime mortgages.
Obama co-sponsored requiring full disclosure about subprime mortgages
Sen. DODD: Today we are facing a crisis in the mortgage markets on a scale that has not been seen since the Great Depression: over 2 million homeowners face foreclosure at a loss of over $160 billion in hard-earned home equity; over one out of every 5 subprime loans is currently delinquent. These high default rates have frozen the subprime and jumbo mortgage markets and infected the capital markets to the point where central banks around the world have had to inject liquidity into the system to avoid the crisis from spreading to other segments of the market.
One of the fundamental causes of this serious crisis is abusive and predatory subprime mortgage lending. The Homeownership Preservation and Protection Act of 2007 is designed to protect American homeowners from these practices, and prevent this disaster from happening again. The legislation will:
realign the interests of the mortgage industry with borrowers to insure the availability of mortgage capital on fair terms
both for the creation and sustainability of homeownership;
establish new lending standards to ensure that loans are affordable and fair, and
provide for adequate remedies to make sure the standards are met; and create a transparent set of rules for the mortgage industry so that capital can safely return to the market without bad lending practices driving out the good.
It is important to keep in mind that only about 10% of subprime mortgages have been made to first time home buyers. This market has not been primarily about creating a new set of homeowners; a majority of subprime loans have been refinances. While maintaining access to subprime credit on fair terms is important, too much of the subprime market has actually put the homes and home equity of American families at risk.
In the coming months, the housing crisis is going to get worse. We will need to continue to press lenders and servicers to provide real relief for homeowners threatened with foreclosure.
Source: Homeownership Preservation and Protection Act (S.2452 ) 2007-S2452 on Dec 12, 2007
