Issue Position: Jobs / Economy

Issue Position

The war on America's middle class needs our immediate attention - families work harder than ever but struggle to fulfill their dreams. To reverse this trend, I strongly support returning to the balanced "pay as you go" budgets of the Clinton era as an essential first step for securing long-term economic growth and generating good-paying jobs. Cutting taxes for the wealthy and transferring income from the middle class to large corporations lead to lower investments in areas with high returns, such as education, research and development, and infrastructure. We need tax relief for middle-class families that includes permanently ending the marriage penalty, extending the lower-income tax rates, making tuition fully deductible, and providing refundable child tax and adoption credits.

Job creation also requires that we maintain our leadership and economic competitiveness in a rapidly changing global market through innovation, entrepreneurship and technological breakthroughs. To that end, America needs to do the following:

* Build a skilled workforce in science, engineering, and information technology for jobs of the future

* Invest in federal research and development

* Guarantee access to broadband technology

* Modernize and permanently extend a globally competitive research and development tax credit

* Protect the intellectual property of American innovators worldwide

* Improve the patent system

* End tax breaks that promote moving jobs overseas

* Expand markets for our products

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