"Eliminating special tax breaks for oil and gas companies: including repealing special expensing rules, foreign tax credit benefits, and manufacturing deductions for oil and gas firms."

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Require publicly traded financial partnerships to pay the corporate income tax.

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Congress has set rules regarding the tax deductibility of the salaries of CEOs, but forms of non-salary compensation have become popular. Obama would look at revamping definitions of compensation.

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"Obama believes that a critical step in restoring fiscal discipline is enforcing pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) budgeting rules which require new spending commitments or tax changes to be paid for by cuts to other programs or new revenue."

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Carried interest is a way of compensating executives by giving them ownership stakes, or "interest," in a business. Carried interest is taxed as a capital gain, which has a lower tax rate than ordinary income. Obama proposes taxing carried interest at the same rate as regular income.

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Government "must invest in ... modernizing our physical structures, particularly our public health laboratories."

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"Pledged to provide at least $50 billion by 2013 for the global fight against HIV/AIDS, including our fair share of the Global Fund, in order to at least double the number of HIV-positive people on treatment and continue to provide treatments to one-third of all those who desperately need them. This funding will allow the U.S. to meet its commitments that have been flat-funded by the Bush Administration, which includes expanding existing programs to help the millions of children orphaned and made vulnerable by AIDS, increasing the number of health care workers by at least one million, preventing violence against women and girls, and improving health care systems so that U.S. assistance can be fully and effectively utilized."

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"As president, Barack Obama will renew America's leadership by making the United States a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; the first human rights treaty approved by the UN in the 21st century and a vital foundation for respecting the rights of people with disabilities worldwide He will urge the U.S. Senate to ratify the Convention expeditiously."

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Amend the Medicare 'homebound' rule, which requires severely disabled recipients to stay in their homes to retain benefits, so that they have the freedom to leave their homes without fear of having their home-health benefits taken away.

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Will put "additional resources into enforcement and investigation in order to crack down on employers who are not following the letter and spirit of the law" in regards to military reservists.

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"His administration will also issue a joint report on 'best practices' across agencies and disseminate that information to the states."

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"Provide at least $2 billion to expand services to Iraqi refugees in neighboring countries."

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"Create a specialized military advisers corps, which will enable us to better build up local allies' capacities to take on mutual threats."

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Restore the Deployment Policies Under Which the Reserve and Guard Enlisted: America should recommit to the broken promises made to the men and women who serve in the Guard and Reserves. An Obama administration will: • Limit lengthy deployments to one year for every six years • Restore the 24-month limit on cumulative deployment time • End the "Stop-Loss" program of forcing troops to stay in service beyond their expected commitments.

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"Establish transparency standards for military contractors. … Create the reporting requirements, accounting, and accountability needed for good governance and actual money savings with contracting."

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"Establish the legal status of contractor personnel, making possible prosecution of any abuses committed by private military contractors."

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"Barack Obama would target this new spending towards strategic goals, including helping the world's weakest states to build democratic institutions, foster healthy and educated communities, reduce poverty and generate wealth."

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"Obama also would launch a new 'America's Voice Corps' to rapidly recruit and train fluent speakers of local languages (Arabic, Bahasa Melayu, Bahasa, Farsi, Urdu, and Turkish) with public diplomacy skills, who can ensure our voice is heard in the mass media and in our efforts on the ground."

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"The right of habeas corpus allows prisoners to ask a court to determine whether they are being lawfully imprisoned. Recently, this right has been denied to those deemed enemy combatants. Barack Obama strongly supports bipartisan efforts to restore habeas rights. He firmly believes that those who pose a danger to this country should be swiftly tried and brought to justice, but those who do not should have sufficient due process to ensure that we are not wrongfully denying them their liberty."

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"The IAEA is understaffed and underresourced at a time when demand for its expertise are growing. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will seek to ensure that the Agency gets the authority, information, people, and technology it needs to do its job. They will work to double the IAEA budget in the next four years (increasing the U.S. annual share to about $225 million). They will press countries to adopt the "Additional Protocol," -- which grants the IAEA the right to conduct more intrusive inspections, including at undeclared facilities — and seek agreement among members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group not to transfer nuclear technology to NPT countries that have not adopted the Additional Protocol. They will work to gain agreement on effective global standards for nuclear safety and security. And they will call for establishing IAEA verification procedures that go beyond the Additional Protocol to strengthen the agency's ability to detect clandestine facilities and activities."

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