Issues

Changing Washington and the direction of our country requires new ideas that meet our greatest challenges: Here’s a start…

Energy

• Declare Energy Independence through a Clean Energy Future

• Set a goal of eliminating oil as an energy source for electricity by 2018
• Set a long-term goal of eliminating the use of fossil fuels entirely by 2050
• Government should steer the private sector toward making us less dependent on oil right now
• Set mandatory standards nationwide to use our energy sources twice as efficiently as we do now for industry and all modes of transportation
• Substitute bio-fuels, natural gas, and renewable sources for oil anywhere possible, to begin lowering our energy costs now
• Stop subsidizing the billion-dollar oil industry, and shift that government investment to the growing private industries already working on wind, solar, geothermal and other renewable sources

Economy

• Create a New Direction for the Economy, and Start Building America’s Future

• Clean energy independence, rebuilding our infrastructure, and innovation are the direction of our economic future
• Invest in the technology sector, the manufacturing sector, green industries, and service industries, to create a strong economic base nationwide, and provide stability behind the highs & lows of the financial and trading sectors
• Long Island was once the economic engine behind the aerospace industry; now it should be the engine behind the clean energy economy and the global, high-tech research & development sector
• Creating a new, modern, economic base for Long Island will lower our taxes, and increase our wages and buying power
• An investment of over $1 trillion in our infrastructure will be needed over the next 10 years to prevent dangerous conditions that will stifle economic growth, and compromise our safety and security
• Rebuilding our infrastructure will stimulate economic growth, create new high-paying jobs, maintain our quality of life, keep America competitive around the world, and make the nation more secure
• Create the National Infrastructure Bank, that will invest in our rails, roads, airports, power-grid, information technology and other systems, based on need & priority, not lobbyist & special interest driven pork-barrel projects

Iraq

• Implement a Responsible Plan for Ending the War in Iraq

• President Maliki of Iraq has said that the Iraqi government believes the end of 2010 is the appropriate time for the withdrawal of foreign combat forces from Iraq
• The United States should set a goal, in-keeping with the requests of the Iraqi government and the best interests of United States, of a flexible withdrawal and redeployment of our combat troops by the end of 2010
• Continuing to fight a war without a mission for victory is not making America safer, and continues to deprive our forces in Afghanistan from the necessary support they need to continue fighting Al-Qaeda
• America should create and lead a long-term, worldwide strategy to foster and encourage the peace and stability in the Middle East that will help eliminate threats to our national security
• We must focus the war on terror on current threats: Al-Qaeda rising in influence in Pakistan, the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan, & international terrorist networks all over the world
• Intelligence gathering, international alliances, military policing, and fighting Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, will continue to be the critical means of defeating international terrorism

Health Care

• Expand Medicare to Cover Every American

• Replace the for-profit, HMO-controlled health insurance industry by nationalizing health insurance under Medicare; Medicare is an efficient insurance administration that already exists
• Nationalized health insurance is the only way to ensure that every American gets proper health care; health care is a right, not a privilege
• The health care industry (doctors and hospitals) is not the same as the health insurance industry; HMOs don’t take care of American families
• Nationalizing the health insurance industry will not compromise the health care industry; everything about the administration of health care should remain private to ensure quality & innovative care is maintained

Fiscal Responsibility

• Restore Responsibility in Federal Taxation & Spending

• End corporate tax loopholes so that billion-dollar corporations & big business account for the nearly 40% of federal revenue they once did (they are account for 7%), and shift the income tax burden off the middle class
• Stop the abuse of tax shelters and offshore tax loopholes that allow trans-national corporations and billionaire individuals to avoid paying taxes
• Eliminate George Bush’s “tax cuts” for 1% of the population; they will have cost the nation over $2.3 trillion by the time they expire in 2009, and ultimately will require the raising of taxes, as they have contributed to our deficit

Government Accountability

• Reform Everything about How Congress Operates

• Ban the practice of lobbying
• Publicly finance all campaigns for federal office, and set a budget for those campaigns; no more private money in politics
• End pork-barrel spending by eliminating earmarks; require a separate bill, with a separate vote, for all expenditures, just as local governments require
• Codify that future ‘tax cuts’ or ‘economic stimulus plans’ are implemented as actual reductions in tax rates and government revenue, and not spending bills that require increasing our debt or cutting costs in order to pay for them
• Consolidate the tracking and reporting of government spending through an Internal Expenditure Service, to ensure we know where every taxpayer dollar is spent, including expenditures through non-discretionary spending
• Stop deficit spending, and bring back pay-as-you-go government financing, that requires tax changes, budget restructuring, or cuts to other programs in order to pay for new spending
• The current ‘borrow and spend’ government financing policy has undermined not only the value of the American dollar, but threatens the long-term health of our entire economy

Immigration

• Building the Great Wall of America is not a comprehensive immigration policy

• The wall is only as good as the forces and the technology to back it up; we need investment in innovative technology because we can not build a 2000-mile long fence
• We must relieve pressure on the border by working with Mexico on economic development, to ultimately make our relationship with Mexico more similar to our relationship with Canada
• We can’t deport 12 million illegal immigrants
• Create a Temporary Worker Immigrant Status program, so that all illegal immigrants here can be documented and working under the same conditions as everyone else
• Create incentives for immigrants to become documented, so that we can get them paying taxes, rather than subsidizing their safety and healthcare through citizens taxpayer dollars
• Extremely low-wage jobs taken by illegal immigrants is contributing to poverty, which costs taxpayers money