President Obama has had a good second term. In fact, one might say both terms have been phenomenal. As Rolling Stone reported last October that “this has not been a feel-good presidency. But it has been a consequential one.” In support, they listed 55 figures detailing Obama’s first 6 years of progress.
In his 2014 State of the Union Address, Obama promised a “Year of Action” and a year of action it was with with more than 80 accomplishments made through new executive actions that helped grow the economy, create jobs, address the threat of climate change, and strengthen the middle class.
President Obama has successfully rallied support for raising the minimum wage in states and cities across the country, while signing an executive order to raise the minimum wage for workers on new federal contracts. He’s supported workplace flexibility and equal pay. He’s protected large, pristine swaths of our federal lands and oceans from degradation, while putting in place historic changes that will dramatically cut greenhouse gases.
He’s laid the groundwork for ambitious expansions of high-speed broadband, so that students will have access to the world’s knowledge and personalized education in real-time in the palms of their hands. He’s also taken action to create new manufacturing jobs and to develop the next generation of breakthrough manufacturing innovation here at home. He’s expanded proven job-driven training models like apprenticeships and helped make student loan payments more affordable—all while protecting career college students from unwieldy debt burdens.
In spite of this record of success, Obama has had his failures as well – just ask any conservative.
As Obama nears the end of his administration, it is fitting to consider all the failures of this Marxist, fascist, Nazi, socialist, Muslim, Kenyan president to live up to Republican expectations.
Below, are but a few of our favorite failures to live up the those conservative pipe dreams.
Rampant Unemployment and Exploding Deficits? Nope, guess again…
Mocking Republican predictions of “gloom and doom,” Obama gave a fiery speech before the Democratic National Committee in February, stating:
I just want everybody to remember, at every step as we’ve made these policies, as we’ve made this progress, we were told by our good friends, the Republicans, that our actions would crush jobs and explode deficits and destroy the country. I want everybody to do a fact check…apparently they don’t remember.
As CBS News reported at the time,
The president laid out an optimistic take on America’s economic prognosis, saying job creation is gaining steam, manufacturing is on the rebound, wages are finally showing some signs of growth, health care inflation is at record lows, and deficits are falling.
The president went on to note in his speech that Republicans are having a difficult time coping with his success, joking that,
Now that their grand predictions of doom and gloom and death panels and Armageddon haven’t come true — the sky hasn’t fallen — Chicken Little’s quiet.
Obamacare Fails to Live Up To Predictions of Doom and Gloom!
Critics of Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act, have warned since its inception that the program would “prove disastrous for the nation.” Republicans have tried to convince the nation of the potential devastation of the country with “dire predictions of job losses in the millions, exploding premiums, a steep jump in the number of uninsured Americans, and a return to economic recession.”
Yet, Bloomberg Politics reported in February that “as the country heads into the second full year under Obamacare, there has been scant evidence of many of the doom and gloom scenarios made by the law’s staunchest critics.”
For instance, the United States is currently in the midst of an employment boom, with a record 59 straight months of job creation, including the period that overlaps with Obamacare’s 2014 start date. The number of uninsured Americans has plummeted as a result of the law, and an impressive 11.4 million Americans have now signed up for coverage. As a result, the rate in the rise of healthcare costs has slowed to a record low. To top things off, the nation’s economy grew in 2014 at the fastest rate since the great recession.
Abortion on Demand Fails to Happen
Rumors have abounded since before Obama was president that if elected, “abortion on demand” at taxpayer expense would become the law of the land. As Patheos reports, “In 2008 prominent Christian Right group Focus on the Family put out a sixteen page document called ‘Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America.’ The document was in the form of a letter, a (fictional) letter from a Christian in 2012 writing back from the future about all the changes that had happened since Obama took office.” This letter made 34 detailed predictions about the future of “Obama’s America” – all 34 of which ended up being false.
One of their predictions involved abortion rights, number 15 according to the letter:
Congress lost no time in solidifying abortion rights under President Obama. In fact, Obama had promised, “The first thing I’ll do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act” (July 17, 2007, speech to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund). This federal law immediately nullified hundreds of state laws that had created even the slightest barrier to abortion. States can no longer require parental involvement for minors who wish to have an abortion, waiting period, informed consent rules, restrictions on tax-payer funding or restrictions on late-term abortions. The act reversed the Hyde Amendment, so the government now funds Medicaid abortions for any reason. As a result, the number of abortions has increased dramatically. The Freedom of Choice Act also reversed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, so infants can be killed outright just seconds before they would be born. States whose laws were overturned challenged the law in court but it was upheld by the Obama Supreme Court.
Of course, as Patheos author Libby Anne noted in her report, “the reality is the exact opposite of this” has occurred. Between 2009 and 2015 abortion restrictions have ballooned out of control “and the Hyde Amendment, prohibiting federal funding for abortion, is still firmly in place.” Additionally, according to an August 1, 2015 report from the Guttmacher Institute,
The current make up of the U.S. Supreme Court have led some state policymakers to consider the possibility that Roe v. Wade could be overturned and regulation of abortion returned to the states. Some state legislatures are considering banning abortion under all or virtually all circumstances; these measures are widely viewed as an attempt to provoke a legal challenge to Roe, while other states are considering abortion bans that would go into effect in the event that Roe is overturned.
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