Obama's New America (Part I)

To celebrate Obama’s first term and Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year” for being the architect of the “New America”, let’s highlight some of his historical and unprecedented achievements.

Employment – The average unemployment rate for Obama’s first term was 9%. To make matters worse, although the unemployment rate seems to be on the mend (currently at 7.8%), the size of the U.S. workforce has declined to its lowest levels since the late 70’s (nearly 4 decades). People no longer looking for work and no longer on unemployment are masking the true unemployment rate in the U.S.

Income – The family income under Obama has decreased by 6% from $54,000 to $50,500 annually. This is the lowest level since 1969 when adjusted for inflation. The number of people living in poverty is approaching 47 million nationally or 15.1%. Not only are millions of people unemployed, millions more are underemployed working fewer hours per week than ever before (more people have part time work). To complicate matters, ObamaCare incentivizes part time work, since the law mandates anyone working more than 30 hours be mandated as a full time employee; hence companies will have employees working fewer hours.

Entitlements – Anti-poverty entitlement spending and enrollment is up across the board (780 billion in 2009 to 930 billion in 2012 – 18.8% increase). The number of people collecting social security disability, food stamps, Medicaid, housing, and other forms of welfare are up dramatically. In fact, over 40% of all Americans are being subsidized by some government program. To make matters worse, the Democrats passed ObamaCare, which is the costliest entitlement of all time.

Taxes – Taxes on all Americans will go up under Obama, not just the income earners over $400,000 annually. ObamaCare, for instance, has dozens of taxes that will hit each and every American. For example, if you do not own health insurance you must purchase it or face a tax.

Spending – Obama has accumulated more debt and deficits than any other president, nearly 5 trillion dollars in 4 years which more than 30% of the total U.S. debt generated in our history. And for the first time in U.S. history, the credit rating for U.S. treasuries had been downgraded from AAA to AA+.

Political Money – Under this president the influence of political money has increased in terms of lobbying and campaign contributions (Nearly 2 billion for Obama alone and much coming from the heads of Oil and Wall Street banks). Obama claimed he would wipe out lobbying, but the fact of the matter is K Street is booming and has grown nearly 10% under Obama. This explains why Obama’s Recovery Act and ObamaCare legislation are 2,000 page bills – because there are lots of earmarks, carve outs, and pork in the legislation to satisfy K-Street lawyers and their clients.

Innovation – Obama has cut NASA, the most innovative program in government history. And instead of investing in innovation, Obama is investing in companies with no technological or intellectual property advantages over global competition. Hence, the result of Obama’s “green” initiative has been a complete failure despite pouring over 100 billion in taxpayer money into this cause. Unfortunately, this type of policy not only proves to generate less innovation, but it also places the government in position of picking winners and losers in industry. And to make matters worse, the companies Obama is picking to win are the same companies that contribute to his campaign. In other words, Obama is more interested in a quid pro quo process yielding favors instead of innovation.