This list gives a basic outline of the platforms of the Republican and Democratic parties in the 2020 election. The Epoch Times has included actions the Trump administration has taken in its first term.
Economy
Trump
- Grant tax credits to companies that move manufacturing back to United States, tariffs on those that don’t.
- Continue improving trade deals after USMCA, China Phase 1, South Korea, and Japan deals.
- Continue to cut regulations for businesses.
- Fund on-the-job training, apprenticeships.
- Make major investment in infrastructure.
- Launched “opportunity zones” program in 8,766 distressed areas, which, so far, have attracted $75 billion in private capital.
- Build on becoming a net energy exporter.
Biden
- Increase the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour.
- Strengthen worker organizing, collective bargaining, and unions.
- Make major investment in infrastructure focused on reducing carbon emissions.
- Make racial equity part of the mandate of the Federal Reserve.
- Will insist on strong and enforceable standards for labor, human rights, and the environment in any future trade agreements
- Will ban anonymous shell companies, expand anti-money-laundering requirements, disclosure of beneficial ownership, and greater oversight of cross-border transactions.
Taxes
Trump
- Signed tax cut legislation.
- Cut capital gains tax to 15 percent.
- Increased the estate tax basic exemption amount from $5 million to $10 million.
- Proposes a cut to payroll tax.
Biden
- Greatly increase capital gains tax to same rate as income tax.
- Increase taxes by $4 trillion over 10 years, including raising taxes on people making over $400,000 a year.
Governance
Trump
- Restore balance and vertical separation of powers between the federal and state governments.
- Promote voter ID, urging all states to join program to keep voter rolls accurate.
- Supports apportionment and redistricting based on Census count of all citizens, and not including illegal immigrants.
- Appoint more federal judges.
- Make Puerto Rico the 51st state; keep the District of Columbia as a district.
- Pass congressional term limits.
- Directed federal agencies to move out of D.C. to opportunity zones.
Biden
- Make the District of Columbia the 51st state.
- Supports removing the Confederate flag and statues of Confederate leaders from public properties.
- Establish a national commission to examine slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and racially discriminatory federal policies on income, wealth, educational, health, and employment outcomes, and to study reparations.
- Opposes Voter ID laws and supports automatic voter registration, same-day voter registration, early voting, and universal vote-from-home and vote-by-mail options.
- Supports apportionment and redistricting based on Census count of everyone, including illegal immigrants.
- Supports requirement for all federal office candidates to disclose at least 10 years of tax returns.
Health Care
Trump
- Rescinded the individual mandate in Affordable Care Act and supports repealing the entire act.
- Protect those with pre-existing conditions.
- Supports health care price transparency.
- Stop “surprise billing” by banning out-of-network charges when the patient doesn’t have control over provider choice.
- Drive down prescription drug prices. Allow purchases from abroad; cut out the middlemen who negotiate drug rebates; introduce “favored nation status” where Medicare pays the lowest drug price available globally.
- Accelerated generic drug approval.
- Signed the Right to Try bill.
- Anti-abortion—curbed federal spending that even indirectly supported abortion.
- Permanently expand telehealth through Medicare payments and preserve more rural hospitals through Medicare incentives.
- Enabled short-term insurance up to a year and is expanding the use of health savings accounts.
- Allowed employers to pay premiums for employees in individual market.
- Allowed small businesses to band together to access insurance plans available to large employers.
- Declared opioid crisis a national public health emergency and focused resources on supply, demand, and treatment.
Biden
- Introduce “public option” health insurance plans run by the federal government.
- Protect and expand the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
- Increase tax credits toward health coverage. Give the tax credits to higher-income people who currently aren’t eligible
- Provide free health care to illegal aliens.
- Expand Medicaid in states that rejected expansion offered by ACA.
- Stop “surprise billing”—ban out-of-network charges when the patient doesn’t have control over provider choice.
- Lower drug prices. Repeal law barring Medicare from negotiating lower prices with drug corporations; government-set prices for new drugs with no competition; allow consumers to buy prescription drugs from other countries.
- Treat abortion as a constitutional right and restore federal funding to Planned Parenthood.
- Double the federal funding to community health centers.
- Target health care companies for antitrust violations.
- Exclude drug ads from tax deductible costs for pharma companies.
- Expand national and global vaccine programs.
Education
Trump
- Support school choice—homeschooling, career and technical education, private or parochial schools, magnet schools, charter schools, online learning, and early-college high schools.
- Wants funding to follow child (currently an average of $12,000 per student per year in public school).
- Ensure First Amendment protections for students on campus.
- Sue colleges for discriminating against Asians and whites.
- Opposes Common Core and supports alternatives; supports less testing.
- Opposes school-based clinics that provide referral or counseling for abortion and contraception.
- Restore private sector student loans and decrease student costs
Biden
- Triple the funding for Title I schools, increase teacher wages.
- Double the number of psychologists, guidance counselors, nurses, and social workers in schools.
- Increase federal funding for public school infrastructure.
- Provide universal Pre-K for all 3- and 4-year-olds.
- Double funding for home visiting programs for parents of young children.
- Make public colleges and universities tuition-free for all students whose family incomes are below $125,000.
- Forgive student debt for low-income and middle-class individuals who have attended public colleges and universities.
Border Security/Immigration
Trump
- Halt the diversity visa lottery program that randomly gives out 50,000 green cards annually.
- Clarify birthright citizenship to exclude illegal immigrant children and “birth tourism.”
- Possibly resubmit DACA repeal to Supreme Court.
- Continue to build 733 miles of border wall on the southern border.
- Increase merit-based immigration from 12 percent to 57 percent, and possibly higher.
- Continue Migrant Protection Protocols, where asylum-seekers who enter illegally are sent to wait in Mexico for their case to be adjudicated.
- Step up workplace enforcement of illegal workers and their employers.
- Forged cooperation agreements with Central American countries to help with regional asylum issues.
- Punish “sanctuary cities” that protect illegal immigrants from federal immigration enforcement.
Biden
- Provide a pathway to citizenship for the more than 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States, including Deferred Action to Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Temporary Protected Status recipients.
- Halt border wall construction, increase screening at ports of entry.
- Widen asylum criteria, stop the Migrant Protection Protocol program, increase refugee cap to 125,000 per year (from 18,000), and vastly expand government resources for all immigrants.
- Rescind travel bans from terror-prone countries.
- Stop workplace enforcement of illegal workers and promote union organization.
- Decrease detention and Immigration and Customs Enforcement interior enforcement efforts.
- Expand temporary worker visa programs for seasonal and high-skilled workers, and provide a pathway to citizenship for agricultural workers.
- Continue family-based immigration, also known as chain migration.
- Provide green cards to foreign graduates of doctoral programs.
Infrastructure
Trump
- $1 trillion investment to fix current infrastructure, including bridges and roads, and expand rural broadband and 5G wireless infrastructure.
Biden
- $1.3 trillion over 10 years for infrastructure and Green New Deal plans.
- Speed transition to electric vehicles; install 500,000 public charging outlets.
- Implement a high-speed passenger rail system between New York and Washington, move the California high-speed rail project ahead, and begin construction of a high-speed rail system from coast to coast.
- Provide every American city with 100,000 or more residents with high-quality, zero-emissions public transportation options.
Housing
Trump
- Keep zoning decisions local, rather than through a previous administration’s federally administered Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing regulation.
- Create program to help foster children with housing once they age out of the system.
- Use Housing and Urban Development programs to reduce homelessness, especially for veterans and families with children.
Biden
- $640 billion over 10 years for access to affordable housing.
- Create new Homeowner and Renter Bill of Rights.
- Provide Section 8 housing vouchers to all eligible families paying more than 30 percent of their income on rent.
- Eliminate local and state housing regulations that “perpetuate discrimination.”
- Withhold federal funds from states that refuse to repeal zoning regulations, with emphasis on ending single-family housing.
Environment
Trump
- Focus on clean air and water, not carbon emissions.
- Expedited environmental assessments.
- Fund national parks cleanup.
- Rejects U.N. Agenda 21 as erosive of U.S. sovereignty, and opposes any form of global tax.
- Narrowed and clarified the Environmental Protection Agency’s Waters of the United States rule that federally regulates waterways.
- Supports development of all forms of energy without subsidies.
- Proposes shift of environmental regulation from federal to the states and transform EPA into an independent bipartisan commission.
Biden
- Invest $1.7 trillion over 10 years for “climate and environmental justice.”
- Implement Green New Deal; move away from fossil fuels and fracking.
- Promises 100 percent clean energy economy and net-zero emissions by 2050.
- Require aggressive methane pollution limits for new and existing oil and gas operations.
- Upgrade 4 million buildings and weatherize 2 million homes over 4 years. Reduce carbon footprint of U.S. building stock 50 percent by 2035.
- Demand worldwide ban on fossil fuel subsidies.
- Recommit to Paris Climate Agreement. Restore funding to Global Environment Facility and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Law Enforcement
Trump
- Eliminate “no-knock warrants.”
- Fully fund and back police departments.
Biden
- Decrease funding to police departments and increase diversity.
- Establish “no-knock warrants” standards.
- Limit the sale and transfer of surplus military weapons to domestic law enforcement agencies.
- Limit qualified immunity.
Criminal Justice
Trump
- Signed the First Step Act in 2018, which allowed for almost 3,100 inmates to be released, mostly drug offenders and inmates serving sentences for weapons charges.
- Supports death penalty.
- Crackdown on child sex trafficking and internet sites that facilite it, as well as pornography.
- Opposes federal decriminalization of marijuana, but indicated support for allowing states to legalize it.
Biden
- Create new $20 billion grant program to get states to shift from incarceration to prevention.
- Supports end of mandatory minimum sentences at federal level.
- Decriminalize cannabis use and automatically expunge prior convictions.
- End all incarceration for drug use alone and divert individuals to drug courts and treatment.
- Eliminate death penalty.
- End cash bail and the use of private prisons.
- Provide housing to all individuals upon release from prison.
- Liberally use clemency powers for certain nonviolent and drug crimes.
Second Amendment
Trump
- Uphold Second Amendment rights.
- Opposes laws that would restrict magazine capacity or ban the sale of the most popular and common rifle.
- Condemns frivolous lawsuits against gun manufacturers and the harassment of firearm dealers.
- Opposes federal licensing or registration of law-abiding gun owners, and registration of ammunition.
- Banned bump stocks.
- Repealed law that required the SSA to send mental health information to the national background check system.
- Supports “red flag” laws.
Biden
- Ban manufacture and sale of military-style firearms and high-capacity magazines; regulate possession of existing assault weapons.
- Restrict individuals to one firearm purchase per month.
- Prohibit all online sales of firearms, ammunition, kits, and gun parts.
- Increase background check time from 3 days to 10 days. Require background checks for all gun sales, including gun show and online sales.
- Send information from the Social Security Administration to the national background check system to stop “certain people unable to manage their affairs for mental reasons” from owning a gun.
- Incentivize expansion of “red flag” laws in all states.
- Move toward a system where all guns sold are “smart guns,” requiring an owner’s fingerprint to operate.
Military
Trump
- Launched Space Force as the sixth branch of the military.
- Rebuilt troop numbers and readiness.
- Passed the VA Accountability and Veterans Choice acts.
- Dismantled the ISIS terrorist group.
- Killed Iranian terrorist Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani and ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
- Bring more troops home.
- Build a strong cybersecurity defense system and missile defense system.
Biden
- Supports sufficient military funding and modernization, but likely decrease in overall defense spending.
- Use force only to defend vital interests and with the informed consent of the American people.
- End Middle East wars, bring troops home from Afghanistan, end support from Saudi Arabia in Yemen conflict.
- Climate change to be at core of Department of Defense policies and plans.
- Allow transgender troops.
- Close Guantanamo Bay detention center.
Foreign Affairs
Trump
- Pulled out of Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, Paris climate accord, Iran nuclear deal, U.N. human rights council, U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), World Health Organization, and the International Criminal Court.
- Escalated sanctions on Iran and Russia.
- Peace agreement between Israel and the UAE, and aiming to add more countries.
- Moved U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.
- Facilitated a larger contribution from countries to NATO.
- Advance the complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
- Expanding defense cooperation with Taiwan and Poland.
- Cut international aid.
- Supports Russia rejoining the G7.
Biden
- Supports rejoining Iran deal, if Iran in compliance.
- Rejoin Paris Climate Agreement. Rejoin WHO and expand funding to it. Rejoin U.N. Human Rights Council, and U.N. Population Fund.
- Expand international aid and commit to the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals.
- Increase funding for diplomatic missions.
- Commits to Israel security.
- Strengthen ties with Japan, South Korea, and Australia.
- Call for commitment to NATO.
- Engage allies, including China, to push for North Korea denuclearization.
- Nuclear weapons only as a deterrent or retaliation
- Supports extending New START treaty with Russia.
China
Trump
- Completed Phase 1 trade deal.
- Pushed against proliferation of Huawei in 5G and other IT infrastructure, and took action against TikTok and WeChat.
- Cracks down on China’s influence operations in United States, including Confucius institutes, Chinese state-run media.
- Cracks down on Chinese nationals stealing intellectual property and trade secrets.
- Closed consulate in Houston for spying. Expose and uproot Chinese propaganda and surveillance of Americans.
- Urges universities to divest from China stocks.
- Divest federal retirement funds from Chinese stocks.
- Scrutinize U.S.-listed Chinese companies for shady accounting practices.
- Highlights state-sanctioned religious persecution.
- Sanctioned Chinese entities for human rights violations.
Biden
- Make bilateral U.S.–China agreements on carbon mitigation contingent on China eliminating unjustified export subsidies for coal and other high-emissions technologies and making verifiable progress in reducing the carbon footprint of projects connected to the Belt and Road Initiative.
- Urge tech companies to pledge not to facilitate repression in China
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