John Edwards lived the American Dream, and he is running for President to help other working Americans share in that dream. His platform starts where he got his start, through education. Edwards wants to give higher salaries to teachers who teach in poorer districts, give scholarships to students who become teachers, and provide one year of free tuition to any student who works or performs community service for 10 hours a week.
Education is very personal to Edwards because he has two young children that will spend their grade school years in the White House. This focus on children is emphasized in his health care plan, which will provide coverage to the 12 million uninsured children in America. He also wants to strengthen the health care safety net by supporting public clinics and hospitals that care for the needy. As a lawyer, John Edwards helped dozens of struggling families that were devastated by medical bills. As President, he wants to help millions more.
The centerpiece of Edwards' platform is his economic plan, which is a comprehensive proposal to lift up hard-working middle class people. It starts by protecting jobs through fair trade agreements and giving a 10% tax credit to corporations that keep jobs in the United States. He will also raise the minimum wage, extend unemployment benefits, and strengthen labor laws. Most importantly, Edwards will create a tax code that rewards hard work instead of pandering to the rich. He will provide a tax credit to first-time homebuyers and match funds in retirement accounts while cutting corporate subsidies and closing corporate tax loopholes. He will reduce capital gains for 95% of Americans, helping them invest and save for the future while raising capital gains for the richest Americans that are living off their investments. This is not class warfare; this is a new way of thinking about taxes: shifting the burden from work back to wealth. In his own words: "I believe the way a rich nation gets richer is by giving all its citizens the chance to get richer, not by only helping those like me who've already succeeded beyond our wildest dreams."
The education, health care, and economy core of his platform comes from his first life as a hardworking young man that became a successful lawyer. However, Edwards has been preaching another plank of his platform in Iowa that comes from his experience as a Senator. John Edwards is a relative newcomer to the political scene and when he came to Washington in 1999, he found a lot of things that need cleaning up. He has never taken money from a PAC, and he wants to ban all registered lobbyists from contributing to campaigns. He also wants to shine a bright light on lobbying activity by forcing lobbyists to disclose who they met with and what bill they discussed every two weeks. Edwards wants to do more than campaign finance reform; he wants to rewrite the rules and shut down the entire system of buying influence in Washington.
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http://www.johnedwards2004.com/issues.asp