Change We Can Believe In: Barack Obama's Plan to Renew America's Promise

INTRODUCTION

HOPE FOR AMERICA

We stand at a moment of great challenge and great opportunity. All across America, a chorus of voices is swelling in a demand for change. The American people want the simple things that—for eight years—Washington hasn’t delivered: an economy that honors the efforts of those who work hard, a national security policy that rallies the world to meet our shared threats and makes America safer, a politics that focuses on bringing people together across party lines to work for the common good. It’s not too much to ask for. It is the change that the American people deserve.

Yet today our nation is at war, our economy is in turmoil, and our planet is in peril. American families are living with a health care system that costs more, delivers less, and bankrupts families and businesses; schools that fail to provide opportunity to too many of our children; and a retirement system that may not be able to pay out what it promised. Across the country, families are paying record prices to fill up their gas tanks and shopping carts. Too many Americans worry about whether they’ll be able to raise their kids in safety and security and give them a shot at a better life.

But these challenges were not inevitable. They are the result of flawed policies and failed leadership. As our world and economy have changed, the thinking in Washington has not kept pace with the tests of the twenty-first century. Instead of investing in America’s ability to compete or confronting the new national security challenges, we’ve seen tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and an open-ended commitment to a war in Iraq that isn’t making us safer and is distracting us from the real threats to our security. As a result, fewer Americans have reaped the benefits of the global economy, a growing number of Americans work harder for less, and our country is losing control over its destiny.

The first years of this new century should have been the moment when America’s leaders had the strength to turn adversity into opportunity, the wisdom to see a little further down the road, and the courage to challenge conventional thinking and worn ideas. We could have reinvented our economy and responded to new threats in ways that seized the promise of the future.

Instead, these past eight years will be remembered for their rigid and ideological adherence to discredited ideas. Just think of what we could have done if we were united and worked together. Instead of making a real commitment to a world-class education for our kids and preparing them to seize the jobs of tomorrow, we passed No Child Left Behind, a law that has the right goals but left the money behind and failed to empower teachers, principals, and school boards. Instead of ending our addiction to oil, we continued down a path that sends our dollars to dictators and tyrants, endangers our planet, and has left Americans struggling with $4-a-gallon gasoline. Instead of investing in innovation and rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, we spent billions in tax giveaways to the wealthiest of the wealthy. Instead of reducing soaring health care costs for all Americans, we did nothing and have seen premiums, co-pays, and out-of-pocket expenses spiral out of control. And instead of rallying the world to our side as we routed Al Qaeda, we spent hundreds of billions of dollars fighting a war in Iraq that should never have been authorized and never been waged.

The past eight years have been a failure of American leadership, not a failure of the American people.

Barack Obama believes that we can change course, and that we must. He looks to the future with optimism and hope. This is not the first time our nation has faced adversity, and each time we have, our people have summoned the will and found the way to conquer our challenges. This moment is no different. Working together, we can revive our economy and give every family the opportunity to succeed; we can lead the world to overcome the transnational security threats that imperil us; we can perfect our union by reinvigorating basic American values; and we can make investments now that will put America at the forefront of the new economy.

The choices in this election aren’t between left and right, or Republican and Democrat. The choices we face are about the past versus the future.

To bring about real change, we need to start by creating a new kind of politics that reconnects the American people with their government and offers not just a vote at the ballot box, but a voice in Washington that cannot be ignored. Americans from every background and every corner of our country yearn for a politics that brings us together instead of tears us apart. What they want—and what our nation needs—isn’t blind, uncritical agreement. Americans don’t agree on everything, nor should we. But behind all the labels and categories that define us, Americans are a decent, generous, and compassionate people, united by common challenges and common hopes. When that fundamental goodness and patriotism is called upon, our country responds. Barack Obama believes that deeply. As President, he will govern very differently than the current occupant of the Oval Office.

On his first day as President, Barack Obama will launch the most sweeping ethics reform in history to make the White House the people’s house. Barack Obama will:

• Close the revolving door that has allowed government employees to use their administration jobs as a stepping-stone to further their lobbying careers.

• End the abuse of no-bid contracts and institute an absolute gift ban for political appointees.

• Hire people to serve not based on party or ideology, but only on qualification and experience.

• Use the Internet to make government more open and transparent so that anyone can see that Washington’s business is the people’s business.

As we fix Washington, we’ll be able to respond to the great challenges our nation faces, and one of the biggest challenges is jump-starting our economy and ensuring that its opportunities are widely shared.

We know that America succeeds when the playing field is level and open, and people don’t fall behind. Our economy is at its strongest when we reward work, not just wealth, and when all Americans can prosper from growth.

It is with our faith in these self-evident truths that we built the largest economy the world has ever known and the biggest middle class in history. But for the last eight years, we’ve failed to keep the fundamental promise that if you work hard you can live your own vision of the American Dream. Instead, our people are working harder for less, and we’ve lost more than 463,000 jobs in the first seven months of this year. The cost of everything from gas to groceries and college tuition is skyrocketing. Foreclosure activity is the highest it’s been since the Great Depression, and housing values have fallen dramatically. Americans are finding it harder to save, retire, and juggle the demands of work and family. It’s easy to feel as if that dream of boundless opportunity that should be the right of all Americans is slipping away.

These difficult times are not an accident of history. To be sure, some of these problems are a result of changes in our economy that no one can control. But the real struggle being waged in American homes and workplaces today is a consequence of tired and misguided economic policies in Washington. Instead of expanding opportunity for working people, Washington insiders heaped benefits on the wealthiest among us. Instead of making sure that people can live their dreams on Main Street, they tilted the scales for special interests and Wall Street. Instead of saying We’re all in this together, they pursued an economic policy that has one idea at its heart: You’re on your own.

Barack Obama believes that to steer us out of this downturn and to put America on course to lead in the global economy, we have to hold firm to one core principle: that our economy must grow to advance opportunity for all Americans. Because when it comes to our economy, the American people are not the problem; they are the answer. If more Americans are succeeding, our economy will be a success. This is a uniquely American idea, one that led us to build public high schools when we transitioned from a nation of farms to one of factories, sent the Greatest Generation to college on the GI Bill, and invested in science and research that have led to new discoveries and entire new industries.

To create widespread opportunity and economic prosperity in this new, global economy, we cannot simply look backward for solutions and hope that the New Deal and Great Society programs born of different eras are, by themselves, adequate to meet today’s challenges. Nor can we try to fence off the world beyond our borders. Technology and globalization have triggered a fundamental change in the economy. There is no going back.

Instead, we must adapt our policies and our institutions to a new and changing world while holding fast to our bedrock principles. As President, Barack Obama will:

• Jump-start our economy with a $50 billion stimulus plan that will put money directly in the pockets of families struggling with rising food and mortgage payments.

• Restore simplicity, fairness, and values to the tax code by rewarding work instead of wealth; giving 150 million middle-class workers and their families up to a $1,000 tax cut; totally eliminating income tax for seven million senior citizens; and making work pay by dramatically expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit.

• Sign into law a health care plan that guarantees affordable, quality insurance to every American who wants it; brings down premiums for every family who currently has coverage; boosts quality; requires coverage of preventative care; reduces the price of prescription drugs; and stops insurance companies from denying coverage based on preexisting conditions.

• Shore up Americans’ retirements by creating automatic workplace retirement plans, strengthening Social Security, and protecting workers’ pensions.

• Help workers share the benefits of economic growth by raising the minimum wage and giving workers a free choice about joining labor unions.

• Make college affordable for everyone willing to work for it through a new $4,000 American Opportunity Tax Credit and increasing the size of Pell Grants.

• Launch a new energy policy that will help ease the burden of high gasoline prices, free us from relying on monarchs and tyrants for our energy supplies, and slow global warming. The Obama plan will make significant investments in clean, renewable sources of energy, and create up to five million new green jobs.

• Keep America competitive by investing in our infrastructure—including roads, bridges, rails, locks and levees, and high-speed Internet—and by boosting our investments in scientific research that will be a key to America’s success in the twenty-first century.

• Give every child a world-class education by recruiting an army of new teachers with better pay and more support; requiring higher standards and accountability from our classrooms; and telling the truth: that the best education starts with parents who turn off the TV, take away the video games, and are engaged in their children’s lives.

Just as commerce, cargo, and capital pay little heed to the lines on a map in this globalized world, the same is true of the new challenges to our national security. For most of our history, national security threats arose from nation-states mustering armies and deploying navies in the pursuit of treasure or power. Even when the Soviet nuclear threat loomed large, our military, diplomatic, and economic strength, as well as the oceans that surround us, gave the United States a large degree of security. In fact, for the last century, not one of our battles was fought on the American mainland. In our new century, that has changed. New threats have emerged that know no boundaries, come from distant corners of the world, and increasingly pose a direct danger to America.

Weak and failing states from Africa to Central Asia to the Pacific Rim are incubators of resentment and anarchy that can become havens for terrorists and criminals. A global climate crisis is warming the planet with potentially devastating consequences. Killing fields in Rwanda, Congo, and Darfur have offended our humanity and set back the world’s sense of collective security. A new age of nuclear proliferation and poorly secured nuclear material has left the world’s deadliest weapons in the reach of an increasing number of countries from North Korea to Iran. And the very openness of our new world can be exploited for terror as we painfully learned on the morning of September 11. We will never forget the nearly three thousand Americans killed on 9/11—more than we lost at Pearl Harbor. And as we unite to combat this enemy, we must always remember that the attack did not come from a dictator, a country, or an empire. It came from stateless terrorists, who distort Islam and hate America, took refuge in Taliban-run Afghanistan, and masterminded a plot to kill innocent American men, women, and children with abandon.

After 9/11, our calling was to write a new chapter in the American story, turning tragedy into triumph. It’s what we did in the Civil War as a conflict over states’ rights became an opportunity to set the slaves free; after Pearl Harbor as that surprise attack led to a wave of freedom rolling across the Atlantic and Pacific; and during the Cold War as the lifting of the Iron Curtain galvanized us to build new institutions at home, establish strong international partnerships abroad, and stand firm for democratic values.

But our leaders in Washington never summoned us. They didn’t seize the opportunity to devise new security strategies and build new alliances, to secure our homeland and safeguard our values, and to serve a just cause abroad. We were ready. Americans were united, and friends around the world stood shoulder to shoulder with us. We had on our side the might and moral force that is the legacy of generations of Americans. The tide of history seemed poised to turn, once again, toward hope.

But instead, we got a politics of fear that uses patriotism as a wedge to divide us. We got the diplomacy of my way or the highway, where the United States—which had summit meetings with Soviet leaders at the height of the Cold War—refused to talk to our adversaries. We got a rigid twentieth-century theory of foreign affairs that insisted that the twenty-first century’s stateless terrorism could be defeated through the invasion and occupation of a country—Iraq—that, while a horrible regime, had nothing to do with the attacks of 9/11.

Now, Osama bin Laden is still at large, and Al Qaeda has reconstituted itself in the tribal areas of Pakistan. We have neither developed the new capabilities needed to defeat a new enemy nor launched a comprehensive strategy to dry up the terrorists’ base of support. We undermined our strength by compromising our values of due process and liberty and by not fully securing our homeland. And we went to war in Iraq—a war that Barack Obama opposed in 2002—with no plan for how to win the peace. This shifted our focus away from battling Al Qaeda, strained our military, divided our country, and diminished our global standing in the world.

In spite of all this, our men and women in uniform have performed bravely and brilliantly. They have done everything that has been asked of them—and much more—without nearly enough backup and support. They have been asked to bear an evolving and ever-increasing load: gathering intelligence, training foreign militaries, supplying earthquake and tsunami relief, fighting with Afghan allies to topple the Taliban, persevering in the deserts and cities of Iraq, and winning every battle they have fought. As it has in four different centuries, the U.S. military has answered when called, and the verdict on their performance is clear: through their commitment, their courage, and their capability, they have done us all proud.

But the sad truth is that they—and all of us—have not had civilian leadership that lives up to this service. It’s time for new leadership in a changing world. In all he does as commander in chief, Barack Obama will be guided by the understanding that there is no more awesome responsibility that is placed in a President’s hand than protecting our country and our security. As President, Barack Obama will:

• End the war in Iraq responsibly with a phased withdrawal that pushes Iraq’s leaders toward a political solution, rebuilds our military, and refocuses our attention on defeating Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

• Turn the tide against global terrorism with new military capabilities, enhanced intelligence, vigorous and tough diplomacy, a restoration of America’s moral authority in the battle of ideas, and forward-looking, strengthened homeland security.

• Stop the spread of nuclear weapons through a comprehensive strategy for nuclear security that will reduce the danger of nuclear terrorism and prevent the spread of nuclear weapons capabilities.

• Rebuild a strong twenty-first-century military that has the training, equipment, and support it needs to respond to new threats.

• Rally the world against the new global threats of the twenty-first century—climate change, oil dependence, extreme poverty, disease pandemics, genocide, and failed states.

• Provide our members of the Armed Forces, wounded warriors, and veterans with the pay, care, benefits, and respect they and their families have earned.

• Lead the free world by rebuilding strong alliances and partnerships to more effectively confront the threats to our security, as well as tough, direct diplomacy even with our enemies. We must once again have the courage and conviction not to be afraid to let any dictator know where America stands and what we stand for.

As we confront these challenges, the conventional thinking in Washington tells us that we’re a country divided into Red states and Blue states; that we’re doomed to fight the same tired partisan battles over and over again; that we can’t come together to grow our economy or meet the threats of the twenty-first century; that we can’t take on big challenges like health care, energy, or education; that Americans can’t reach past the lines of region, religion, or race; and that young Americans are unwilling to serve and act as citizens in the highest sense.

But at this moment, millions of Americans are already coming together to prove that thinking wrong and demand something better. They are hungry for new leadership and a new direction for America. These Americans