Here are some of the spending proposals by the major Democratic presidential candidates:
HILLARY CLINTON:
Annual:
Universal health care: $110 billion
Retirement programs: $25 billion
Energy: $10 billion
Tuition assistance: $8 billion
Education: $5 billion
Science: $2.8 billion
Transportation/transit: $2.5 billion
Family/child care: $1.75 billion
Other spending, not limited to single year:
Energy: $50 billion
Foreclosure/housing assistance: $2 billion
BARACK OBAMA:
Annual:
Energy investment: $15 billion a year for 10 years
Middle-class tax relief: $85 billion
Universal health care: $65 billion
College tax credits/matching retirement savings: $26 billion
Pre- and grade-school education: $18 billion
Foreclosure prevention: $10 billion (one-time cost)
Additional mortgage revenue bonds: $10 billion (one-time cost)
National service plan: $3.5 billion
How they propose paying for some of this spending:
_ Rolling back some of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for families with annual incomes above $250,000.
_ Beginning to draw down the U.S. military presence in Iraq, costing on average $9 billion a month.
_ Taxing environmental polluters to pay for cleaner emissions efforts.
_ Obama proposes unspecified hikes to corporate taxes and trying to tax profits made by U.S. corporations abroad.
_ To address Social Security solvency issues, Obama proposes lifting a cap on Social Security contributions, which aren't collected on income above $102,000. This would change the system's progressive nature, asking the rich to pay in sharply more than they'll get back.
_ Clinton wouldn't let the estate tax expire but would freeze it at 2009 levels.
_ Neither candidate says how he or she will pay to end the alternative minimum tax, which could ensnare 52 million taxpayers by 2018. Repealing it could cost the Treasury more than $2 trillion over 10 years.
Sources: Clinton and Obama campaign Web sites, campaign speeches.