Election Issues

The Economy

An economy is the way a country manages money and resources to produce, buy, and sell goods, or products, and services. While the U.S. is one of the wealthiest nations on the globe, its economy has gone through ups and downs.

Many more people have jobs now than they did 8 years ago, but some people still have a hard time keeping up. They work in low-paying jobs and don’t cover their cost of living. Some of the best-paying jobs demand specific training and skills.

Hillary Clinton

• Help the economy grow by supporting the middle class.
• Upgrade roads, tunnels, and modern infrastructure like Internet to create more jobs.
• Raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $12 an hour.

Hillary Clinton

• Make in-state colleges and universities tuition-free for middle- and low-income families. Cut childcare costs to help families work Increase taxes on wealthier Americans
• Make in-state colleges and universities tuition-free for middle- and low-income families.
• Cut childcare costs to help families work
• Increase taxes on wealthier Americans

Donald Trump

• Reduce rules that corporation have to follow.
• Cut taxes for business so they can hire more people.
• Renegotiate trade deals with other countries

Donald Trump

• Cancel the Paris Agreement that President Obama signed and undo the Climate Action Plan.
• Invest in the coal industry. Open up more areas of the U.S. for oil drilling.
• Allow families to exclude the cost of childcare from their taxable income.

Education

Education is an important issue for students and families.and for the country. Why? The U.S. needs well-educated citizens in order to compete in the global economy.

One big question is how to pay for education. Currently, taxpayers contribute more than $580 billion a year to educate the nation’s 50 million Kindergarten through Grade 12 public-school students. That’s about $11,670 per pupil.

Young people who plan to go to college face rising tuition costs, and many of them graduate with high debt from student loans.

Hillary Clinton

• Make public college and universities tuition-free for families earning up to $125,000, and make community college free for everyone. She also wants the government to help graduates pay back student loans. She has proposed raising taxes on wealthy Americans to pay for these policies.
• Help graduates pay back student loans. She has proposed raising taxes on wealthy Americans to pay for these policies.

Hillary Clinton

• Invest more money in early-childhood education, including preschool for all 4-year-old in the United States.
• Invest more money in computer-science education in order to prepare students for jobs

Hillary Clinton

• Pay teachers more, and give them more opportunities for professional development.
• Provide money to help public school systems across the country rebuild schools in need of repair and modernization

Donald Trump

• Offer vouchers of up to $12,000 so that poor families can send children to the school that they think is best.
• Improve education but spend less on it.

Donald Trump

• Work with Congress to ensure that universities are doing their part to make higher education more affordable and reduce the amount of student debt.
• Provide opportunities for young people to attend and pay for two- or four-year colleges, or to acquire vocational training or technical education.

Health Care

In 2010 President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act. Also called Obamacare, it aims to provide more American citizens with better and cheaper health insurance.

Under the law, all citizens are required to have health insurance or pay a penalty. The candidates have different ideas on how to improve the country’s health-care system.

Hillary Clinton

• Defend and improve the Affordable Care Act, which currently covers about 20 million people.
• Bring down health-care costs that insurance companies don’t cover. Patients have to pay for these costs out of their own pockets.

Hillary Clinton

• Reduce the cost of prescription drugs and protect consumers from unfair prescription-drug price increases.
• Expand access to families regardless of their immigration status.

Donald Trump

• Get rid of Obamacare
• Enforce immigration laws and deny healthcare to illegal immigrants. Trump has said that providing healthcare to people who are in the U.S. illegally “costs us some $10 billion annually.”

Donald Trump

• Allow people to purchase health insurance across all 50 states to increase competition.
• Require that all health-care providers, such as doctors, clinics, and hospitals, make their prices known to patients ahead of time.

The Environment

One of the greatest challenges facing the world right now is how to protect the environment. Climate change is causing problems across the globe, threatening everything from animals’ habitats to humans’ food supply.

The U.S. government works with other countries to combat climate change, keeping the nation’s air and water clean, and making sure businesses are making choices that help, rather than hurt, the planet.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have expressed very different opinions about—and solutions for—the environmental challenges ahead.

Hillary Clinton

• Take Climate Change seriously. Work to eliminate pollution.
• Generate enough clean power for every American home within 10 years.
• Come up with innovative ways to fight pollution and promote clean energy.
• Defend existing standards and create new ones, as needed, for companies and products that create pollution.

Donald Trump

• Climate change is not caused by human activity.
• Undo the U.S.’s commitment to join 190 countries in fighting climate change.
• Get rid of regulations about the environment because they hurt our economy. Support the coal industry by getting rid of President Obama’s Clean Power Plan

Donald Trump

• Support fracking, a controversial method of extracting oil and natural gas from the earth, and the building of oil pipelines on land held by the federal government.

Keeping Us Safe

The U.S. government always works to keep its citizens safe. But as the U.S. confronts ISIS and other terrorist groups, the security of our country is an important topic in the 2016 presidential elections.

The candidates have their own ideas on how to maintain and improve security while being on the watch for terror attacks.

Hillary Clinton

• Her work as U.S. Secretary of State and as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee has helped her to understand the issues facing our military today.
• Create a defense budget that uses taxpayer dollars wisely.

Hillary Clinton

• Strengthen foreign alliances, particularly with Israel.
• Confront terrorists and defeat ISIS by taking out its strongholds in Iraq and Syria, and by working with U.S. allies to dismantle global terror networks.

Donald Trump

• Increase spending on the military Increase Army troops, Marine corps battalions, Navy ships and Air Force fighter planes
• Invest in a missile defense system with modernized Navy cruisers and additional destroyers to counter threats from Iran and North Korea.
• Invest in security against cyber attacks.

Donald Trump

• Invest in a missile defense system with modernized Navy cruisers and additional destroyers to counter threats from Iran and North Korea.
• Request a plan from generals for fighting ISIS within 30 days of taking office.