A quick review of each party’s stance on issues that matter to student voters
Democrats: President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden
Healthcare
-Allow small businesses to receive tax credits for their workers
-Continue to provide preventative services such as cancer screenings, annual well-woman visits and contraceptives, with no out-of-pocket cost
-Ensure insurance coverage for people with pre-existing conditions
-Ensure that Medicaid will cover more working families
-Ensure that families will continue to have access to mental health and substance abuse services
-Oppose efforts to privatize or voucherize Medicare
-Allow young adults to remain on their parents’ insurance policy even after they’ve entered the workforce
Higher education
-Increase money for Pell Grants
-Reduce the percentage of monthly income that a person has to pay back to students loans to 10 percent
-Invest in community colleges
-Call for additional partnerships between businesses and community colleges to train 2 million workers for needed jobs
-Refrain from deporting young people who are seeking higher education
-Make it possible for foreign students earning advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering and math to say here and help create jobs
Economics
-Cut tax breaks for companies that are shipping jobs overseas
-Offer tax breaks to companies that are investing in the U.S.
-Increase American exports to other countries
-Create more jobs by harnessing energy resources such as wind, solar, biofeuls, geothermal, hydropower, nuclear, oil, clean coal and natural gas. This will encourage innovation and save money for consumers.
-Continue to reform the unemployment system to get people back to work
-Continue to encourage the unemployed to seek futures in entreprenuership
-Continue to invest in American infrastructure, creating jobs and projects to improve roads and bridges
Republicans: Presidential candidate Mitt Romney and Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan
Healthcare
-Repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare)
-Ensure that consumers have a choice in their healthcare
-End tax discrimination against the individual purchase of insurance
-Make it possible to purchase insurance across state lines
-Expand stem cell research
-Invest in healthcare delivery systems that will provide greater, more cost-effective access to high quality healthcare.
-Invest in basic and applied biomedical research that may hold potential for dealing with diseases and disorders such as Autism, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, diabetes and various types of cancer
-Preserve the right of a company to provide insurance that are consistent with its religious beliefs
-Preserve the right of the individual to have healthcare services that are consistent with their religious beliefs
-Opposition to physician-assisted suicide
-Opposition to abortion
Higher education
-Promote new systems of learning to compete with traditional four-year colleges: expanded community colleges and technical institutions, private training schools, online universities, life-long learning and work-based learning in the private sector
-Encourage greater transparency on student loans so that families are aware of completion rates, repayment rates, future earnings and other factors that may affect their decisions
-The government should not give student loans but should be the insurance gaurantor for the private sector
-Re-evaluate legislation that drives up tuition costs
Economics
-Rejects the use of taxes to redistribte income or to fund unnecessary or ineffective programs
-Extend the Bush tax cuts
-Eliminate taxes on interest, dividends and capital gains for lower and middle-income taxpayers
-End the Death Tax
-Repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax
-Reform the tax code by reducing marginal tax rates by 20 percent in a revenue-neutral manner
-Reduce corporate tax rates in order to keep U.S. corporations competitive internationally
-Restructure entitlements such as Medicare
-Enact the Secret Ballot Protecton Act, enforcting the Hobbes Act and passing the Race Act in order to protect and promote union workers
The topics covered in this article do not represent the platforms as a whole.
To see the platforms in their entirety, please visit each party’s official website: www.democrats.org and www.gop.com.
