The media, both liberal and progressive have not been kind to President Obama since Democrats lost control of both the Senate and House during the November mid-term elections. Many media outlets have declared Obama’s presidency over, Obama himself a “lame duck walking.”
However, Obama 2.0 has emerged since the elections as being more powerful than ever and determined to push his agenda through, regardless of – or possibly with the assistance of – Congressional gridlock.
Below is a list of some of Obama’s more important accomplishments since the November elections, in chronological order, thanks in part to Mother Jones.
November 10: Obama asks the FCC to adopt tough Net Neutrality rules. As The New York Times reported at the time:
In his most direct effort yet to influence the debate about the Internet’s future, President Obama said on Monday that a free and open Internet was as critical to Americans’ lives as electricity and telephone service and should be regulated like those utilities to protect consumers.
November 15 to February 15, 2015: Open-enrollment for Obamacare begins, exceeding all expectations. NBC News reports that a new survey shows “More than 10 million people got covered by health insurance over the past year, bringing the rate of uninsured down from 17.7 percent to 12.4 percent.”
The Obama administration says just under 7 million people signed up for private insurance, often with federal subsidies, on the new exchanges over the past year. They expect 9 million to do so this year.
According to another article on NBC, 2.5 million people have signed up on the exchanges as of December 12th of this year.
November 20: As Mother Jones reports, Obama “concluded a climate deal with China that was not only important in its own right, but has since been widely credited with jump-starting progress at the Lima talks.” The New York Times elaborated reporting:
The historic announcement by President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China that they will commit to targets for cuts in their nations’ carbon emissions has fundamentally shifted the global politics of climate change. The agreement has given a fresh jolt of optimism to negotiations aimed at reaching a new international climate treaty next year in Paris, where the American and Chinese targets are expected to be the heart of the deal.
November 20: Obama throws a lifeline to over five million undocumented immigrants through the use of expansive executive actions protecting them from the threat of deportation. As we reported at the time,
Basically, what the President is proposing is an extension of his earlier “policy directive” known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Initiative that directed the Department of Homeland Security to “exercise prosecutorial discretion as appropriate to ensure that enforcement resources are not expended on low priority cases, such as individuals who came to the United States as children.”
What President Obama proposed Thursday night is temporary relief from deportation to specific categories of undocumented immigrants if they have “been in America for more than five years; … have children who are American citizens or legal residents; if [they] register, pass a criminal background check, and [are] willing to pay [their] fair share of taxes.
November 26: Obama celebrated Thanksgiving week by signing off on a new EPA rule that significantly limits ozone emissions. The Washington Post reported at the time that:
The Obama administration on Wednesday announced plans to tighten restrictions on smog-causing ozone, a move that will address a major cause of respiratory illness for millions of Americans. …
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy cited ozone’s damaging effects on children and the elderly in moving to toughen limits on the pollutant for the first time since 2008. Ground-level ozone, a respiratory irritant that derives from fossil-fuel burning, is linked to asthmatic attacks and other ailments and is the cause of “code red” respiratory warnings common to Washington and other urban areas during the summer months.
December 15: Mother Jones reports Obama “took a quiet victory lap as Western financial sanctions considerably sharpened the pain of Vladimir Putin’s imploding economy.” The Guardian reported Sunday:
Falling oil prices have combined with western sanctions to create the worst economic crisis of Putin’s 15 years in power. With oil revenues tailing off sharply, on the one hand it will expose how little has been done to diversify the Russian economy during the boom years, while on the other the amount of money to share among the group of billionaires around Putin will shrink dramatically.
Part of the rationale behind western sanctions against people in Putin’s inner circle was to harm them and prompt them to pressure the leader. If the economic situation continues to deteriorate, and the political turmoil continues, one school of thought suggests Putin could be in trouble from within his own inner circle.
December 16: Obama “got nearly everything he wanted during the lame duck congressional session, and more” according to Mother Jones, adding that “Democrats confirmed all important pending nominees, and then got Republican consent to several dozen lesser ones as well.” On December 16th, the Senate confirmed James Cole, Jr. to be General Counsel, Department of Education, as reported by United States Senate Democrats. As The Hill reported last Friday, “the confirmation of Surgeon General Vivek Murthy — who faced fierce opposition from the right over his support for gun control — gave liberals a rare victory on that issue.” In another article, The Hill reported that “despite a lack of legislative accomplishments, the Senate confirmed more judges than any other modern Congress.”
During the 113th, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) made it a top priority to clear President Obama’s nominations — several of which filled vacancies in courts with judicial emergencies. His office said the 113th Congress confirmed 132 judges overall.
Throughout the 113th Congress, Senate Democrats have focused on confirming well-qualified judicial nominees to relieve the judge shortage plaguing our nation’s justice system,” Reid said Wednesday. “Despite unprecedented obstruction, today’s statistics show that Senate Democrats were able to overcome political gridlock and confirm the highest number of district and circuit court judges in a single Congress in over thirty years.
December 17: Obama announces the renormalization of relations with Cuba, a historic event marking the end of over 50 years of failed policy. As The New York Times reported last Thursday,
President Obama will move as soon as next month to defang the 54-year-old American trade embargo against Cuba, administration officials said Thursday, using broad executive power to defy critics in Congress and lift restrictions on travel, commerce and financial activities.
The moves are only the beginning of what White House officials and foreign policy experts describe as a sweeping set of changes that Mr. Obama can make on his own to re-establish commercial and diplomatic ties with Cuba even in the face of angry congressional opposition.
December 19: At his year-end press conference last Friday, Obama brags that “The steps that we took early on to rescue our economy and rebuild it on a new foundation helped make 2014 the strongest year for job growth since the 1990s.” The Washington Post reports that as long as “December numbers don’t go south,” that claim will hold true for the year, adding that:
According to data from the Department of Labor, the United States has added 2.65 million jobs this year. That’s January through November; December data won’t be out until next month.
December 20: Last Friday, Obama indicated at his year-end press conference that he’s about to reject the Keystone Pipeline project. The Grist reports that “Speaking at his end-of-the-year press conference on Friday afternoon, President Obama sounded very much like he’s poised to reject the Keystone XL pipeline. He gave his sharpest assessment to date of its potential costs and benefits — lots of costs and few benefits.”
Responding to a question from The Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin on what he will do about the Keystone XL pipeline, Obama provided the following lesson on macro-economics:
At issue on Keystone is not American oil, it is Canadian oil that is drawn out of tar sands in Canada. That oil currently is being shipped through rail or trucks, and it would save Canadian oil companies and the Canadian oil industry an enormous amount of money if they could simply pipe it all the way through the United State down to the Gulf. Once that oil gets to the Gulf, it is then entering into the world market and it would be sold all around the world. … There is very little impact, nominal impact, on U.S. gas prices, what the average American consumer cares about, by having this pipeline come through.
And sometimes the way this gets sold is, let’s get this oil and it’s going to come here and the implication is that’s gonna lower oil prices here in the U.S. It’s not. There’s a global oil market. It’s very good for Canadian oil companies and it’s good for the Canadian oil industry, but it’s not going to be a huge benefit to U.S. consumers. It’s not even going to be a nominal benefit to U.S. consumers.
The Grist goes on to report that regarding the Keystone pipeline, “Obama went on to observe that the other supposed benefit, construction jobs, is real but small and temporary. Meanwhile, our transportation and clean water infrastructure crumbles and Republicans refuse to appropriate money to fix and improve it, which would create more jobs and lasting economic effects than construction of any pipeline.” According to the president”
[W]hen you consider what we could be doing if we were rebuilding our roads and bridges around the country, something that Congress could authorize, we could probably create hundreds of thousands of jobs, or a million jobs.
Obama also discussed issues related to climate change and the Keystone project, noting that “If we’ve got more flooding, more wildfires, more drought, there are direct economic impacts on that.”
ADDITIONAL READING:
- White House touts ‘successful’ 2014
- Senate clears 96 judicial nominations after rule change
- 40 Reasons Conservatives Are Wrong About Obama’s Immigration Actions
- Early gift: Gas below $2 at some stations in 24 states
- Presidential Actions – from the White House website
- 2014: Year of Action – from the White House website
- The Contemporary Presidency After the Orders: Presidential Memoranda and Unilateral Action – From Presidential Studies Quarterly
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