I’ll say this for Obama’s economic plan roll out today: It doesn’t have the tortured syntax and metaphor pile-up of Hillary’s “Re-Building the Road to the Middle Class Bus Tour.” He went with the more traditional notion of “Reclaiming the American Dream.” His speech this morning looks to be a more eloquent vision than hers and/because it is also significantly less detailed and number-heavy. Those details were wisely put here (PDF). The campaign says Obama intends to offer ways to achieve these goals:
- Provide a middle class tax cut of up to $1,000 for working families, and eliminate the income tax for retirees making less than $50,000 per year.
- Address the challenge of balancing work and family by guaranteeing workers paid sick days, expanding the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), supporting paid FMLA, and doubling funding for after-school programs.
- Help Americans buy and keep their homes.
- Protect American families by reforming bankruptcy laws, predatory credit card policies, and abusive payday lending practices.
- Reduce health care costs by $2,500 for a typical family.
- Strengthen retirement security by automatically enrolling workers in portable retirement accounts and providing additional incentives for Americans to save.
- Put the cost of college in reach by providing a $4,000 refundable tax credit available at the time of enrollment, and create a Community College Partnership Program to strengthen this vital resource for American students.
The goals don’t sound that different than Hillary’s:
- Make health care affordable and accessible to every American.
- Reduce the cost of energy and make us energy independent.
- Expand access to affordable, high-quality child care.
- Make college more affordable.
- Protect families from predatory lenders and help them avoid foreclosures.
- Increase the minimum wage.
- Create good jobs with good wages to expand the middle class.
- Balance the federal budget so we don’t pass today’s massive debts to the next generation.
- Reward savings, protect pensions, and provide greater retirement security.
I’ll try to muck around in the details for some differences in approach, if there are any to be found.