Today, I looked at John Edwards’ website. He has an Issues section that gives a brief overview of all the issues important to him. There are also 34 issue links listed. Each is a hyperlink to a page that goes into detail about his position on that issue. They are classified into three categories entitled “Standing Up For Regular Families”, “Restoring America’s Leadership Role In The World”, and “Investing In Our Future And Our Communities”. Lastly, he has an 80-page PDF download! Granted, all of page 2 consists of a large picture of himself speaking in front of an American flag so large, that fewer than half it’s stripes can be seen. Regardless, this is going to be a long post. To make it a little easier, I’ll break it up into multiple parts…

Hold on… this sounds very familiar. This time, I’ll forgo the PDF in favor of the webpages.

Health Care: This issue is neatly organized into two sets of bullet points. The first lists the goals of Edward’s health care plan, and the second lists how he plans to achieve those goals. Basically the goals are affordable health insurance for the uninsured, cheaper rates for the insured, and lower costs for business offering coverage to employees. To achieve these goals, he’d require business to either offer an insurance plan or subsidize employee’s private insurance plan, offer medical tax credits, expand public health programs like SCHIP and Medicaid, and reforming insurance laws. He also wants to set up regional Health Care Markets that would create increased competitiveness between insurers resulting in more choices and lower costs for individuals and business. The last step for his plan would be to make health coverage mandatory for all Americans.

I don’t understand the last bit. Why make coverage a legal mandate? I can somewhat see the case for mandating coverage for children, but adults? Is it that the tax payer often ends up picking up the tab for the uninsured when they visit emergency rooms? That makes some sense. Also, what would be the penalty for violating the mandate? I think that is an important factor to consider. Lastly, I don’t see the market-based system he proposes to make insurance affordable for everyone. What is his plans to cover the poorest Americans?

Poverty: Edwards considers poverty the greatest moral issue and has a great deal to say about it, just like a guy named Jesus once did. You know, that guy all those $30,000+ SUV-driving, GOP-voting Christians keep talking about. Senator Edwards wants to see an end to all American poverty by 2036. Before he address how he plans to achieve that, he first admits that we need to began using an honest measure of poverty, which includes considerations like taxes, health care, child care, transportation, and government assistance. That way, the real impact on the poor of all policies can be more accurately assessed.

Edwards’ plan is largely made up of his “Working Society” initiative. The philosophy behind it is that everyone who is able to work will be expected to and be rewarded for it. The first component (this will please Santini greatly) is hiking the minimum wage to $9.50/hr by 2012. Also categorized under “Rewarding Work” is the creation of a million stepping-stone jobs for those lacking opportunity and/or skills, supporting rural communities, strengthening labor laws (yay unions!), and enforcing workplace protections.

One area I consider vital to helping poverty is a good housing plan. Current “Section 8” housing subsidies concentrate poverty in small areas and have the effect of generating ghettos and, in turn, generational poverty. Refreshingly, Edwards takes this challenge head-on. He would institute a new housing voucher system that would disperse poor families into better neighborhoods. At the same time (and this is crucial), he’d phase out housing projects that concentrate poor. He would, however, continue urban renewal projects that would improve these neighborhoods.

Edwards would also create a savings-matching program and increase access to banking for low-income, working families. He’d also increase consumer protections that disproportionately affect the poor, including restrictions that would end predatory lending (mortgages and ‘payday’ loans) and harsh credit card rules. The credit card rules are interesting. He’d require a late-payment grace period, eliminate all universal default clauses, and limit interest penalties to new purchases/cash advances only. I really like those ideas. They would force card issuers to limit their exposure to make up for the loss of revenue that would result from these measures. This would mean less credit for those who are unable to afford it.

Like most people, Edwards recognizes that access to a good education is a major component of ending poverty. One goal of his, promoting economic diversity in schools, would be at least partially achieved by his housing plan. The others include strengthening schools via better, higher-paid teachers and a tougher high school curriculum, creating “second-chance” schools for dropouts, and expanding work-study programs for financing college.

The last section of his plan for poverty is called “Support Responsible Families”. Edwards’ plans under this heading include helping fathers find jobs then requiring them to support their child(ren), ‘fighting’ teen pregnancy (though he doesn’t indicate how), creating a nurse home-visit program for new parents with limited financial means, and funding family literacy programs.

Rural America: Apparently, rural America is suffering. Being a city-boy, I had no idea. According to Edward’s website, rural towns are shrinking in population as residents seek out economic opportunity in the cities. Sound to me like the problem is slowly fixing itself. He makes an odd statement that I am skeptical about: “Small towns and rural areas are the keepers of American values like family, work, community, and freedom. America depends on rural communities for a strong manufacturing base, reliable and affordable food, and increasingly for clean energy as well.” Wasn’t rural America the most resistant to emancipation and the slowest to adapt to civil rights? Isn’t food cheap because of the mechanization introduced by corporate farming techniques? Aren’t most manufacturers overseas now? Aren’t the best protectors of our freedoms city-dwelling lawyers? Also, I value my freedom just as much as any American. To suggest otherwise is a bit insulting. Anyway, on to what Edwards would do to help rural communities.

He would start by investing seed money to attract businesses to rural areas and enable rurally-based entrepreneurs. He’d also make rural regions the basis behind clean energy via the New Energy Economy Fund. After all, that is where you can grow bio-fuels and that is where there is room for solar and wind-turbine arrays for energy generation. He would also enforce laws against anti-competitive practices in agriculture (and there are a lot of them), invest in the infrastructure of rural communities, and require equal access to banking services. Edwards believes these measures would lead to better economic parity.

His next group of initiatives is entitled “Helping Rural Towns and Counties”. This includes ensuring that all rural development funds reach the poorest areas, improving rural schools by offering incentives to teachers, and improving rural health care.

The final category is “Protecting the Rural Way of Life”. Included under this heading is enforcing anti-meth laws. Apparently, many rural areas are hotbeds of methamphetamine production. Who knew? Also somewhat oddly included is support for the 2nd Amendment. He believes gun shows and hunting are important to rural ‘culture’.

Tax Reform: Edwards’ tax reform policies are aimed at reducing income inequity. As he puts it, the tax code should favor work over wealth. He starts with the tax breaks he’d like to implement. The first is a tax credit to match up to $500 a year in savings for families earning up to $75k. The savings would have to be used for saving for retirement, college, buying a home, etc. or for emergencies. I like the idea of encouraging savings and this idea sounds like the best I’ve heard yet. He also wants to vastly expand the Child Care Credit so that it pays up to half of dependent care costs (up to $5k annually). As I’ve mentioned before, I would like to see an end to all tax codes that encourage reproduction. The planet has enough people right now, thank you very much. Lastly, he’d like to triple the earned income credit for single adults and cut the marriage penalty. I thought the marriage penalty had already been eliminated. This may sound uncharacteristicly conservative of me, but I wouldn’t mind more tax benefits for married couples. A tax code that favors marriage sounds like a good idea to me. Although, to be fair, we’d have to extend the right to marry to all couples.

The other way he’d revise the tax code is to reverse, what he calls, “the war on work”. He would first raise the tax rate on capital gains to 28% for the wealthiest Americans. One thing I don’t quite understand is why capital gains aren’t just considered another form of income? Thus one would pay on capital gains according to the appropriate tax bracket that income (or loss) places them in. He’d also repeal the Bush tax cuts, reduce off-shore tax havens, and closing unfair loopholes such as unlimited executive pensions and tax breaks for hedge funds.

Tax Simplification: A comprehensive simplification of the tax code is well overdue for America. Ideally, I’d like to see a progressive income tax system with no deductions, credits, or other adjustments where the bracket cutoffs are indexed to core inflation, but that’s a pipe-dream. This would result in less fraud, fewer mistakes, no loopholes to abuse, less paperwork, a much smaller IRS, and much easier tax forms. One would just look up one’s bracket on a table, multiply that rate times your income and you have taxes owed. Let’s see how close Edwards’ plan comes to this ideal.

In his plan, the IRS would basically become your tax accountant, prepare you taxes, and send you a ‘Form 1’ for you to sign and return (with payment, if necessary). You can check for accuracy first, if you are so inclined. Things that would exempt you from using Form 1 is if you wish to deduct any charitable contributions, experienced capital gains, or some other ‘complex’ transaction occurred during the year. He claims that Form 1 would ensure that more poor families would receive the Earned Income Credit to which, they are entitled.

His plan comes no where near to my ideal, but it does sound like a good idea. I would be curious as to how many additional IRS employees this would require, how hard this would hit the tax-prep industry, and how much of a hassle correcting an error would be. With satisfactory answers to these questions, I like the idea a lot.

Government Reform: Edwards would like to reduce the influence of lobbyists and special interest groups on politics while simultaneously increasing the influence of individual Americans. The first category addresses how he’d strengthen the voice of ‘ordinary’ Americans. The first step he would take is to form a ‘Citizen Congress’ every two years. He’d ask one million citizens nationwide to join in what amounts to one gigantic teleconference. Unfortunately, this sounds more like a feel-good exercise more than anything substantive. He’d also reform election laws to require paper trails for electronic voting machines (we have these in my district), expand voting rights and participation, and end voter intimidation and suppression via making such tactics a federal crime. It’s very disappointing that he didn’t mention increasing participation by making Election Day a national holiday. Thirdly, he would crack down on consolidated media. Most media is now owned by very few corporations.

The next category addresses campaign finance reform. He cites a statistic that demonstrates the influence of money on the election process: in 2004, the best-financed candidate won 90% of elections. Instead of reducing the influence of money on candidates, which has runs into Constitutional problems, he wants to increase the influence of small, individual donors. He do this by instituting a public finance program that matches donations up to $100 8-to-1! At that matching rate, I’d start donating to candidates. As it stands now, I know my contribution would be drowned out by wealthy donors. He’d also require corporation to disclose all contributions to political advocacy groups.

Lastly, Edwards addresses reducing the influence of lobbyists. The first thing he wants is a line item veto to cut earmarks, the lobbyists’ bread and butter. As I’ve said before, the last thing American democracy is a more powerful executive. He’d also ban campaign contributions by lobbyists (which violates the 1st Amendment) and by ending the practice of bundling donations. He also wants a ban on government officials from becoming lobbyists and visa versa. The former has undue access and the latter have clear conflict of interest issues. Lastly, he wants more disclosure rules for the activities of lobbyists and ban the executive branch from accepting gifts.

Wow, I’ve only gotten through 6 of the 34 issues currently listed on Edwards’ website. So far, he wins the award for the most verbose. On the plus side, he goes into actual depth on the issues. Unlike other candidates, he states both his goals and how he plans to achieve them for each of the issues. Also, he cites the sources for many of the claims he makes throughout. It may seem like I’m criticizing this Democratic candidate more then the other two I’ve covered, but it’s really due to the fact that there is enough detail listed to find fault with.