Since Obama has put out his plan it is time to line the two plans up and see what the proposals are. So here we go!! Once again I am pulling the info from their websites so I am not going to link.

Please do not comment if you are going to do the following:

1. Rehash the AUMF vote and/or Obama's record on voting for the supplementals.

2. State that Edwards is not sincere, honest or dedicated to his fight on poverty. If you want to take that approach PROVE IT! The bankruptcy bill he voted on had a min. wage increase in it. I think he made a trade off on that.
   
3. MENTION HAIRCUTS or HOUSE SIZE in any fashion.
   
4. Bring in any insinuations, right wing smear (aka the debate comments) or any other unsubstantiated attacks on EITHER candidate.

If because of these rules this diary only gets 10 comments I do not care. I am tired of my fact based diaries getting hijacked by the above subjects. Have I made myself clear?

If you want to discuss the pros and cons of their plans please do.

I DO NOT WORSHIP EDWARDS, THINK HE WALKS ON WATER OR HATE OBAMA. I base my decisions on plans, past actions and who I think is the best prepared to fix the deep problems in this country.

I am going to list them side by side by the breakdowns they have on their sites which are pretty similar.

EDWARDS

First his mission statement:

End Poverty by 2036: John Edwards believes that ending poverty should be a goal our nation actively pursues. A national goal will rally support for the cause and help us measure our progress. In 1999, Tony Blair announced a 20-year goal to end child poverty in Great Britain and he has already reduced child poverty by 17 percent [Washington Post, 4/3/2006]. Edwards calls for a national effort to:

Cut poverty by one third within a decade, lifting 12 million Americans out of poverty by 2016.
End poverty within 30 years, lifting 37 million Americans out of poverty by 2036

Jobs:

Rewarding Work
Create 1 Million Stepping Stone Jobs for Workers Who Take Responsibility

As much as 18 percent of former welfare recipients do not have a job. Edwards suggested creating 1 million temporary jobs over five years. However, some willing workers cannot find jobs because of the place they live, a lack of skills, experience, and references, or other obstacles like a criminal record The jobs would be reserved for individuals who cannot find other work after six months of looking, pay the minimum wage, and last up to 12 months. In return, workers must show up and work hard, stay off drugs, not commit any crimes, and pay child support. Studies have shown that these programs are successful moving people into permanent jobs. Jobs would be chosen carefully with local business and labor leaders to meet local needs without displacing existing workers. [Turner, Danziger and Seefeldt, 2006; Mathematica, 2002; CBPP, 1997; Ellwood and Welty, 1999]

Raise the Wage to $9.50 by 2012: Edwards will set a national goal of a minimum wage that equals half the average wage. To accomplish this goal, he will raise the minimum wage by 75 cents a year until it reaches $9.50 in 2012. Edwards will also restore the minimum wage for tipped workers to half the full minimum wage; the minimum wage for these workers has stood at $2.13 since 1997. [EPI, 2007]

Ensure Continued Rising Wages: Working families cannot rely on Washington to stand up for them. Instead, recent decades saw Congress tolerating a stagnant minimum wage while millions of families lost ground. Once the minimum wage reaches $9.50 an hour, Edwards will index it so that it automatically rises each year along with average wages, ensuring that all workers share in America's growth. [CBPP, 2006]

Take Care of the Caretakers: The Supreme Court recently ruled that home health care workers are not eligible for federal minimum wage protections. Millions of these care providers work long hours without overtime and at hourly rates below the minimum wage, and the occupation is projected to grow faster than any other job in America. Edwards will amend the Fair Labor Standards Act to include home health care workers. [Washington Post, 6/12/2007; BLS, 2004

Create Opportunity in Rural America. Nearly 90 percent of America's poorest counties are rural, and many have been hit hard by the struggles of the U.S. manufacturing and textile industries. Edwards believes in investing more in rural community colleges to strengthen "mid-skilled" industries and linking training to actual business needs. He also supports rural small business centers to build rural economies around homegrown businesses. [Rural Poverty Research Center, 2006; Center for the Study of Rural America, 2005]

Strengthen Labor Laws. Union workers earn 28 percent more than non-union workers, on average. Federal law promises workers the right to choose a union, but the law is poorly enforced, full of loopholes, and routinely violated by employers. Edwards supports the Employee Free Choice Act to give workers an effective, democratic choice over whether to form a union.

Obama

Jobs
Expand Transitional Jobs and Bridge Programs

Transitional jobs are a promising way to help chronically unemployed people break into the workplace. This approach places participants into temporary, subsidized wage-paying jobs. It also offers mentoring and social services designed to address the work-blocking problems like personal and family conflicts. Obama supports providing funding for both transitional jobs programs as well as bridge programs that partner the federal government with employers and community-based organizations to identify job opportunities, develop customized training programs, and place low-income employees in better jobs.

Create Career Pathways for Workers to Move up the Ladder

Barack Obama believes that all workers who want a job should not only be able to gain meaningful employment, but also be able to move up the career ladder to further support their families and serve as role models for their children. Obama has introduced legislation to help strengthen career ladders by first identifying regions and industries where career pathways are not fully developed and then establish public-private partnerships to lift up low-wage workers. Obama supports using the successful organized labor model of providing workers with additional skills and opportunities, and looks forward to working with organized labor to build more opportunities for low-income workers to reach economic security.

Ensure Freedom to Unionize

Barack Obama believes that workers should have the freedom to join a union without harassment or intimidation from their employers. Although an estimated 60 million Americans would join a union if given the opportunity, companies too often evade employment laws and deny workers the opportunity to organize and advocate for their rights. Obama is a cosponsor and strong advocate for the Employee Free Choice Act, a bipartisan effort to make the unionization process more transparent and increase penalties on companies that violate employee rights. He voted in favor of the legislation this year and will continue to fight for its passage. Obama also will fight to make the card check process more common and less difficult.

Help Youth Connect with Growing Job Sectors

Barack Obama will create the 5-E (Energy Efficiency, Environmental Education and Employment) Disconnected Youth Service Corps. This program would directly engage disconnected and disadvantaged youth in energy efficiency and environmental service opportunities to strengthen their communities while also providing them with practical skills and experience in important career fields of expected high-growth employment. The program would engage private sector employers and unions to provide apprenticeship opportunities. The program also encourages summer high school students to stay in school, and provides GED help and other wrap-around social services for drop-outs.

Improve Transportation Access to Jobs

Three quarters of welfare recipients live in areas that are poorly served by public transportation and low-income workers spend up to 36% of their incomes on transportation. As president, Obama will work to eliminate transportation disparities so that all Americans can lead meaningful and productive lives. Obama will strengthen the federal Jobs Access and Reverse Commute program to ensure that additional federal public transportation dollars flow to the highest-need communities and that urban planning initiatives take this aspect of transportation policy into account.

Increasing Minority Access to Capital

Access to capital is critically important to the development of minority-owned businesses. Yet there has been a growing gap between the amounts of venture capital and access to business loans available to minority-owned small businesses compared to other small businesses. Less than 1 percent of the $250 billion in venture capital dollars invested annually nationwide has been directed to the country's 4.4 million minority business owners. A recent study found that minority business owners, even if they have the same characteristics as other business owners, are significantly denied credit more frequently and required to pay higher interest rates than white applicants. To compound this problem, in recent years there has been a significant decline in the share of the Small Business Investment Company financings that have gone to minority-owned and women-owned businesses. In order to increase their size, capacity, and ability to do business with the Federal government and to compete in the open market, minority firms need greater access to venture capital investment, as well as greater access to business loans. Barack Obama will strengthen Small Business Administration programs that provide capital to minority-owned businesses, support outreach programs that help minority business owners apply for loans, and work to encourage the growth and capacity of minority firms.

Reduce Crime Recidivism by Providing Ex-Offender Supports

America is facing an incarceration and post-incarceration crisis in urban communities. Today, nearly 2 million children have a parent in a correctional facility. Barack Obama recognizes that it is simply unacceptable to keep ignoring this crisis in American families and communities. In the U.S. Senate, Obama has worked to provide job training, substance abuse and mental health counseling, and employment opportunities to ex-offenders. In addition to signing these important programs into law, Obama will create a prison-to-work incentive program, modeled on the successful Welfare-to-Work Partnership to create ties with employers, third-party agencies that provide training and support services to ex-offenders, and to improve ex-offender employment and job retention rates. Obama will also work on initiatives to reduce barriers in state correctional systems that prevent finding and maintaining employment

HOUSING

Edwards

Expanding Affordable Housing
Establish a New Era at HUD. The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) needs an overhaul to make housing policy a force for economic opportunity. Too many low-income families are segregated in high-poverty neighborhoods, cutting them off from jobs and good schools and creating areas of concentrated poverty that undermine other antipoverty programs. Edwards suggested creating one million new housing vouchers over five years to let low-income families choose to live in better neighborhoods. He believes that we should also expand the supply of affordable housing that is economically integrated with other communities. He also proposed coordinating housing policies across metropolitan areas, cutting HUD bureaucracy, and requiring recipients of new housing vouchers to work if they can.

Fight Predatory Lending. Home ownership promotes economic security and, for most families, is the top generator of wealth. However, predatory lenders use deceptive terms and abusive interest rates and fees to strip away families' equity, reducing the amount of wealth they have saved in their homes and sometimes depriving them of their homes entirely. Edwards called for fair rules to protect homeowners

Create a Million New Housing Vouchers: Our current housing policies concentrate low-income families together, isolating willing workers from entry-level jobs and children from good schools. Edwards will create a million vouchers over five years to help low-income families move to better neighborhoods. At the same time, he will phase out housing projects that tie families to certain locations and are often lower quality and more expensive than private sector alternatives.

Revitalize Devastated Neighborhoods: Edwards believes that it is better to invest in struggling neighborhoods than abandon them. He will reform and expand the HOPE VI program to replace dilapidated housing in areas of concentrated poverty.

OBAMA

Housing
Create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund

In too many communities, low-income families are priced out of the housing market. Between 1993 and 2003, the number of units of affordable to low-income households fell by 1.2 million. Barack Obama believes we should create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund to develop affordable housing in mixed-income neighborhoods. The Affordable Housing Trust Fund would use a small percentage of the profits of two government-sponsored housing agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to create up to 14,000 new units of affordable housing every year.

Combat Mortgage Fraud and Subprime Loans

There is a growing epidemic of mortgage fraud crimes in which sophisticated scam artists cheat homeowners out of their mortgages. Some have estimated that more than 2 million homeowners with subprime mortgages are at risk of losing their homes. Barack Obama believes we must establish stiff penalties to deter fraud and protect consumers against abusive lending practices. Obama introduced the STOP FRAUD Act that would increase funding for federal law enforcement programs, create new criminal penalties for mortgage professionals found guilty of fraud, and require industry insiders to report suspicious activity. This bill also provides counseling to homeowners and tenants to avoid foreclosures. In the Illinois State Legislature, Obama cosponsored a bill creating the High Risk Home Loan Act to protect borrowers who enter into high-risk home loans. As president, Obama will continue to fight to ensure more Americans can achieve and protect the dream of home ownership.

Fully Fund the Community Development Block Grant

The Bush Administration has consistently attempted to cut funding for CDBG, by $1.2 billion next year and $6.9 billion over the next five years. Obama has fought against these cuts, and will restore funding for the CDBG program, which supports economic development and affordable housing opportunities in communities throughout the country.

HELPING FAMILIES SAVE

EDWARDS

Help Low-Income Workers Save with "Work Bonds."Edwards proposed a new tax credit to help low-income, working Americans save for the future. The credit would match wages to $500 per year and be directly deposited into a savings account. Edwards has also proposed expanding the Savers Credit to match the savings of low-income families.

Expand Access to Bank Accounts and Fight Abusive Payday Lending. An estimated 56 million Americans don't have bank accounts, and they pay check cashers $8 billion for services most banks provide for free. Short-term payday loans regularly charge interest rates above 300 percent. Edwards suggested subsidizing bank accounts for working families and national rules to prevent abusive payday lending. [Center for Economic Progress, 2004]

Obama has nothing under a similar heading so on to the next one.

EDUCATION

EDWARDS

Expand College Opportunity: In Greene County, North Carolina, Edwards helped launch a College for Everyone program that is helping students attend college this fall. He has proposed a similar national program where students who agree to work part-time during their first year at a public college would get their tuition paid. Research has shown that the first year of college is the most difficult one, where additional student aid can make the greatest difference. [Dynarski, 1999; Census, 2005]

Create Second-Chance Schools for High School Dropouts: As many as one-third of all students drop out of school, and the rates are even worse for poor and minority students. Almost a third of dropouts between the ages of 25 and 34 live in poverty. Large majorities of recent dropouts regret their decision and now believe that a high school degree is the key to good jobs. Edwards believes that we should create second-chance schools, including some in evenings and at community colleges, to help former dropouts get back on track. [Civic Enterprises, 2006; Manhattan Institute, 2006; Urban Institute, 2001]

Strengthen Public Schools: Edwards suggested expanding access to preschool programs such as Head Start and North Carolina's Smart Start, investing more in teacher pay and training to attract good teachers where we need them most, and strengthening high schools with smaller schools and a more challenging curriculum.

Investing in Family Literacy: Thirty million American adults have very limited literacy skills and the children of functionally illiterate parents are twice as likely to be illiterate themselves. Family literacy programs address the educational needs of both parents and children by enhancing the language skills of adults and providing age appropriate instruction to accelerate the cognitive development of children. President Bush has drastically cut funding for family literacy. John Edwards will restore funding and give family literacy programs the support they deserve

Give Bonuses to Middle-Class Schools Enrolling Low-Income Students: Edwards will provide $100 million for school districts implementing economic integration programs, helping finance transportation and additional resources for schools enrolling low-income children. Similar programs have successfully attracted suburban participation in places like St. Louis. [Century Foundation, 2002]

Create Magnet Schools Dedicated to Economic Integration: To attract more students to low-income areas, Edwards will double current federal magnet schools funding to $200 million a year and dedicate the increase to schools that draw students from across district lines and pledge to maintain economically diverse schools. The right magnet schools can attract middle-class suburban students to high-poverty urban neighborhoods, as does a Montessori school in Harford, if the school at the end of the bus ride is excellent. Nationally, an estimated 150,000 students are on waiting lists for magnet schools

OBAMA

Increase Funding for Head Start

Research shows that many poor and minority children do not enter kindergarten ready to learn. Black children start school substantially behind white children in reading and math, and these early achievement gaps expand throughout elementary school. Barack Obama supports increasing funding for the Head Start program to provide low-income preschool children with critically important learning skills, and supports the necessary role of parental involvement in the success of Head Start.

Place High-Quality Teachers in Low-Income Classrooms

Some studies have indicated that the most important factor in a child's education is the quality of their teacher. Barack Obama introduced a plan to support school districts that try new methods to improve student achievement and reward high-quality teachers and school leaders. Under his initiative, 20 districts across the country will get grants to develop innovative plans in consultation with their teacher unions. High-performing teachers, and those who take on new responsibilities, such as working at struggling schools and mentoring new teachers, will be eligible for pay increases beyond their base salary. These innovation districts will show results that can be replicated in other school districts.

Extend Summer School Opportunities to Low-Income Students

Students lose an average of two months or more worth of math facts and skills during the summer, with the largest learning loss affecting children who live in poverty, suffer from learning disabilities, or do not speak English at home. Barack Obama's "STEP UP" plan addresses the achievement gaps among grade-school children by supporting summer learning opportunities for disadvantaged children through partnerships between local schools and community organizations.

Make College More Affordable

College tuition rates are rising almost 10 percent a year. These surging tuitions priced over 200,000 students out of college altogether in 2004. Two decades ago, the Pell maximum grant covered 55 percent of costs at a public four-year college, compared with only 32 percent today. The very first bill Barack Obama introduced in the U.S. Senate was a bill to help make college more affordable by increasing the maximum Pell Grant amount to $5,100. Barack Obama will also eliminate wasteful subsidies to private banks under the federal student loan program. Reforming this program will save taxpayers billions of dollars each year -- money that Obama will direct to fund need-based grants, such as the Pell Grant.

EXTRAS: Promoting responsible families and a few other tidbits

EDWARDS

Encourage and Reward Responsibility from Fathers. Welfare reform required mothers to work and helps them find jobs, but it failed to touch poor fathers. It did not help fathers support their children and become valuable members of their family and their community. Edwards will require more fathers to help support their children and, in return, help them find work. He will reserve budget cuts in child support enforcement to increase collections by more than $8 billion over the next decade and ensure that payments benefit children.

Cut Taxes for Low-Income Workers. The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) matches the first earnings of low-income workers. The credit is often used for household necessities and work expenses. It is also an effective tool for increasing labor force participation. The EITC already lifts more than 4 million people out of poverty, and expanding it could draw hundreds of thousands more Americans into the workforce and lift more than a million out of poverty. [CBPP, 2006; Sawhill and Thomas, 2001]

Triple the EITC for Adults without Children. Working adults without children are the only Americans living in poverty who pay income and payroll taxes. A single worker at the poverty line pays more than $800 in federal income and payroll taxes. Moreover, the EITC largely overlooks single men, who receive less than 2 percent of EITC benefits. Edwards supported tripling the maximum EITC for single adults to $1,236. This proposal will give 4 million low income workers a tax cut averaging $750, lifting workers out of poverty and drawing more men into the workforce. [CBPP, 2000 and 2006]

Reduce the Marriage Penalty for Struggling Families. Marriage is the foundation for strong, economically secure families, but the EITC penalizes married couples by up to $3,000. Edwards believes that we must cut the EITC marriage penalty. His proposal would reduce penalties on low-income families who choose to get married and cut taxes for 3 million couples by about $400 a year. [CBPP, 2006]

Fight Teen Pregnancy. Edwards believes we can build on recent partial success in reducing teen pregnancy. The U.S. still has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the industrialized world. Edwards called for more support for struggling young people and investments in programs that help them beat the odds

Home Visits for New Parents: Home visits improve prenatal health and the quality of caregiving after birth. John Edwards will invest in home visits by registered nurses to low-income new parents, providing matching grants to states to serve 50,000 families. Multiple visits from nurses, with manageable caseloads, to families living at up to twice the poverty line will start during pregnancy and continue through each child's second year. Children receiving nurse visits are cognitively more advanced than their non-visited peers, have fewer behavioral problems, and are less likely to be abused or neglected

Enforcing Labor Protections: In many industries, violations of our most basic labor laws have become the new way of doing business. The Department of Labor has found that the countless businesses do not adhere to minimum wage and overtime laws. In fact, in the United States today, there is only one wage and hour inspector for every 150,000 employees, half of inspections are conducted by fax and telephone, and up to 30 percent of employers misclassify their employees to avoid paying taxes, benefits and worker's compensation. [DOL, 2007, 1998, 2001, 2001; NELP, 2007]

To help protect workers Edwards will revive the Department of Labor, creating a new taskforce to target the industries with the worst abuses of minimum wage and overtime laws. To stop the misclassifying of employees as independent contractors, he will require companies to document their payments to subcontractors, increase penalties for employers who routinely pay "off the books," and give workers more rights to question their status. He will also make workplaces safer by boosting funding for OSHA inspectors, updating OSHA practices for the new service economy, restoring ergonomic standards, strengthening whistleblower protections and extending OSHA protections to all workers.

Paid Sick Days for All: Nearly half of all private-sector workers, and nearly 80 percent of low-wage workers, must forgo pay to miss even a single day due to illness or caregiving. John Edwards believes that protecting the health of workers is not only important for families, but also best for the health of the community. Edwards' new initiative will help ensure that all employees have at least seven paid sick days a year, with pro-rated leave for part-time workers.

OBAMA

Promote Responsible Fatherhood

Since 1960, the number of American children without fathers in their lives has quadrupled, from 6 million to more than 24 million. Children without fathers in their lives are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime, nine times more likely to drop out of school, and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. Barack Obama has re-introduced the Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act to remove some of the government penalties on married families, crack down on men avoiding child support payments, and ensure that payments go to families instead of state bureaucracies. The legislation would also fund support services for fathers and their families, including domestic violence prevention efforts. As President, he will sign this bill into law and continue to implement innovative measures to strengthen families.

Support Parents with Young Children

Barack Obama would expand the highly-successful Nurse-Family Partnership to all low-income, first-time mothers. The Nurse-Family Partnership provides home visits by trained registered nurses to low-income expectant mothers and their families. The trained nurses use proven methods to help improve the mental and physical health of the family by providing counseling on substance abuse, creating and achieving personal goals, and effective methods of nurturing children. Proven benefits of these types of programs include improved women's prenatal health, a reduction in childhood injuries, fewer unintended subsequent pregnancies, increased father involvement and women's employment, reduced use of welfare and food stamps, and increased children's school readiness. Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis concluded that these programs produced an average of five dollars in savings for every dollar invested and produced more than $28,000 in net savings for every high-risk family enrolled in the program. The Obama plan would assist approximately 570,000 first-time mothers each year.

Expand Paid Medical Leave

Today, three-out-of-four low-wage workers have no paid sick leave. It is fundamentally unfair that a parent playing by the rules can get fired or lose wages because their child gets sick. Barack Obama supports efforts to guarantee workers seven days of paid sick leave per year, a proposal that will not impose an onerous burden on employers

Well there you all have it. I did not put in Edwards' Rural Plan because Obama hasn't put his out and this diary would be WAY too long at that point.

I know it is a wall of text but I hope you find it useful.

With respect,

Chaoslillith