I usually do not like to give people a failing grade especially if they are trying their best and if they are learning from their mistakes. Unfortunately, Obama’s effort on domestic policy is not focused on the right priorities and he has made the same mistake by ignoring the economy time and time again. Obama’s chief focus for the first 2 years should have been about the economy and creating jobs, and he has failed miserably at this task. And what’s worse is that the nearly 1 trillion dollars spent by his Recovery Act (stimulus) failed to create any jobs. And to make matters even worse, Obama has created a fictitious statistic called “saved jobs” to defend this abysmal legislation that was loaded with pork and special interest pet projects. Unemployment has hovered around 10% for the past year and the underemployment rate is approximately 18%. Yet, the Obama administration has focused its energies on other, much less important issues.
Most of the Obama White House’s first two years was focused on healthcare reform (ObamaCare). The American public is starting to feel the effects of this atrocious partisan legislation since the average family has seen their healthcare insurance premiums go up 20% in the last year. The administration has also offered waivers to over 100 companies and union groups so they can continue to provide their employees and members healthcare insurance. This proves the law is grossly flawed. ObamaCare is and will be a failure because it does nothing to lower the rising costs of healthcare in our country. And what’s worse the law is loaded with exceptions and is therefore, not applied equally amongst individuals, companies, states, communities, and organizations. Obama used the economic recession as an excuse to force this monstrosity of a bill down the throats of the American people.
The administration and Democrats spent a large portion of their time creating financial reform in the wake of the financial meltdown. Unfortunately, this convoluted bill will fail to prevent another financial meltdown; it still has provisions to bailout firms considered “to big to fail”; and it does nothing to reform the government entities (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, The Securities Exchange Commission, The Federal Reserve, etc.) who both aided in the meltdown and failed to prevent it from happening.
The Obama administration also showed its ineptness when dealing with a national crisis after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. Once again, Obama should have prioritized the disaster as his most urgent matter and placed his entire focus on resolving the issue. Instead, Obama continued business as usual, and when he emphasized the disaster, his actions only made the situation worse. He refused foreign assistance; he acted slowly to contain the spill; he opened an investigation into BP; and he simply failed to lead by example. After all, there would be plenty of time to worry about legalities and environmental concerns after the leak is contained. And what’s worse he used the disaster for political purposes to push his cap and trade and green agenda.
Obama has had two years to extend the Bush tax cuts, but he and the Democrats were too busy using the economy and the oil spill as excuses to expand every facet of the federal government to interfere into every aspect of our lives. For instance, Obama has appointed a czar to control the Asian Carp population in the Great Lakes and is implementing policies, which are not the law of the land, such as his “Race to the Top” education plan. He may also attempt to circumvent congress to implement carbon emission standards and to provide amnesty to illegal aliens. So now we start the New Year with high unemployment and higher taxes for everyone. And let’s not forget that our national debt has ballooned by over 3 trillion dollars in two years.
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