What Obama and McCain say they’ll do for your family
By KJ Mushung

Everyone’s talking about the economy and the war in Iraq.  But where do the presidential candidates stand on issues that affect parents and children?  Issues like the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit, funding for after-school programs and flexible work schedules.

Two very different men are vying for the nation’s top office. Unfortunately for the undecided, their rhetoric is very similar: “Vote for me and I’ll solve all of America’s problems, and your life will be much better for it.” Or something like that.

Both candidates are married with children and proclaim to have family values, like every other politician in the country. This article will show you where John McCain and Barack Obama stand on family matters and what they promise they’ll do about them if elected.

Barack Obama: a father who barely knew his own

Background
Barack Obama is a senator from Illinois who was born in Hawaii in 1961.  He later lived in Indonesia for a while.  He attended Occidental College in Los Angeles, and Columbia University in New York City.  Obama studied law at Harvard University, where he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review.  He received a J.D. in 1992.

Obama was a member of the Illinois State Senate from 1997 to 2004 and was elected as a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 2004 for a term that began Jan. 3, 2005.

Obama was raised by his mother after his Kenyan father returned to Africa when he was two years old.  He only saw his father once more before the elder Obama died.  Obama is married with two daughters.

Issues
The Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit provides tax relief to those who are working and paying for the care of children younger than age 13, a disabled spouse, or other dependent.  To qualify for the credit, the person must have earned income.  The maximum allowable expenses that can be used to claim the credit is $3,000 per child and $6,000 per family.  However, this credit can only be used to offset federal income tax liability; it’s not a refund.  Obama has pledged to reform the tax credit by making it refundable and allowing low-income families to receive up to a 50 percent credit for their childcare expenses.

Currently, the Family and Medical Leave Act covers employees who are working for employers with a staff of 50 or more.  If elected, Obama plans to expand it to cover businesses with 25 or more employees and to cover more purposes as well, including allowing workers to take leave to care for elders and 24 hours of leave each year to participate in their children's academic activities.  He also has stated that he will expand FMLA to cover leave for employees who need to address domestic violence issues in their lives.

Obama’s campaign says that as president, Obama will encourage all states to adopt a paid-leave program for employees to care for their newborns or ill relatives.  He will provide a $1.5 billion fund to assist states with start-up costs and to help offset the costs for employees and employers, assuming there’s anything left after the economic bailout.

“Now is the time to help families with paid sick days and better family leave, because nobody in America should have to choose between keeping their jobs and caring for a sick child or ailing parent,” said Obama at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

Obama plans to double funding for the main federal support for after-school programs, The 21st Century Learning Centers Program, to serve a million more children.

If elected, Obama says he will make college affordable for all Americans by creating a new American Opportunity Tax Credit.  This universal and refundable credit will ensure that the first $4,000 of a college education is completely free for most Americans, and will cover two-thirds the cost of tuition at the average public college or university.  Recipients of this credit will be required to conduct 100 hours of public service a year.

John McCain: military father and husband

Background
John McCain III is a senator from Arizona who was born in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936.  He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., and went on to the National War College in Washington, D.C., in 1973.  McCain served in the U.S. Navy from 1958 to 1981 and was a prisoner of war in Vietnam for five years.

He was elected as a Republican in 1982 to Congress and served from Jan. 3, 1983, to Jan. 3, 1987.  McCain was then elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986, and after being re-elected several times, is currently serving a term that ends Jan. 3, 2011.

McCain's father was also a military man who was gone for long military deployments, while he and his siblings were cared for by his mother.  He is married and has seven children and four grandchildren.

Issues
According to McCain’s campaign Web site, he co-sponsored the Family Friendly Workplace Act (S. 1241 and S. 4), two bills introduced in the Senate in the 1990s.  A Family Friendly Workplace Act was also introduced in the House of Representatives in May 2008 (H.R. 6025).   This bill was not sponsored by McCain because he’s in the senate.  Neither effort became law.

Had either of them passed, the bill would have amended the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. The Family Friendly Workplace Act would have allowed employers to provide flexible work schedules to help employees balance the demands and needs of work and family, such as allowing non-federal employees to take compensatory time off rather than be paid overtime and to work more than 40 hours in one week and correspondingly less in another week.

McCain supported the Family and Medical Leave Act in 1993 but currently has no plans to change it if he becomes president.

McCain has stated that he believes quality education is the right of every child and the responsibility of every parent, teacher and school.  It’s quite possible that nearly every politician to have ever lived has made a similar statement. But what’s different about McCain’s stand is that he supports school choice.  McCain has said parents should have the ability to choose the best school for their child’s academic needs and has supported legislation advocating school choice for public school students. 

He plans to expand The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program.  This program serves more than 1,900 students from families with an average income of $23,000 a year, according to his campaign office and the program’s literature.  Over 7,000 families have applied since the program began in 1993.  McCain believes that this program should be expanded to help 1,000 more families in the District.

A 2007 U.S. Department of Education study of the program reported that, “After one year, there was no clear evidence of a statistically significant difference in test scores between students who were offered a scholarship and students who were not offered a scholarship.” The full text of the report is available online at ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20074009/index.asp.

McCain has also said that parents should be able choose the television channels they allow in their homes and block the channels they wish to keep from their children’s view without having to pay for the blocked channels.

McCain plans to revise the tax code to double the personal exemption for each dependent to $7,000 and lower taxes paid by families on their retirement accounts, college savings funds and other investments in stocks and mutual funds.

For more information on the candidates’ backgrounds and voting records, visit bioguide.congress.gov/biosearch/biosearch.asp and type in the name of the candidate.

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