Defending the President

Constructive criticism is a positive part of democracy, but Destructive criticism for the sake of attack, and often void of logic, is pure politics. The latter is the majority of criticism President Obama has faced in recent months.

Critics have attacked President Obama relentlessly since he hit the 100 day mark. Why? Do they really think 100 days is a measure of success? Do they understand the way Presidential orders and Congressional bills work? Do they know there’s an entire administration of people who work 15 hour days running our nation, a responsibility most of these critics can’t even imagine? Do they even have any concept of how government works? A president doesn’t just create a new law, sign it into effect, and bingo that’s it. There are steps to ensure the democratic way and these steps take time. It took Bush at least nine months to destroy the success of the Clinton years. It’s going to take a lot longer to fix eight years of destructive and neglectful governing. Give Obama a chance.

Those who do understand the way our government works and still attack the president are just out to get him. They are not going to give him a chance and they never intended to. It won’t matter what he does; they’ll find something ridiculous to say, even if it doesn’t make much sense, i.e. radio and FOX news.

What I wonder is how many of these “critics” have someone (even just one single person) examining everything they do in their lives? Probably not many of them. It’s really easy to sit back and pick on someone from afar. It’s also easy to criticize someone for a job they’ll never know anything about. It’s also too easy to examine someone else while failing to look at yourself.

The following is a short list of the Obama administration’s recent accomplishments (from WhiteHouse.gov) There are many more, but this is a work in progress.

ECONOMY

Progress

• The President signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

• The President announced the "Making Home Affordable" home refinancing plan.
• The President launched a $15 billion plan to boost lending to small businesses.
• The President and Secretary Geithner announced the details of the Financial Stability Plan.
• President Obama played a lead role in G-20 Summit that produced a $1.1 trillion deal to combat the global financial crisis.
• The President signed the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act which gives the federal government more tools to investigate and prosecute fraud, from lending to the financial system, and creates a bipartisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to investigate the financial practices that brought us to this point.
• The President signed the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act, expanding on the Making Home Affordable Program to help millions of Americans avoid preventable foreclosures, providing $2.2 billion to help combat homelessness , and helping to stabilize the housing market for everybody.

• The President signed the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure (CARD) Act to protect Americans from unfair and deceptive credit card practices.

DEFENSE

Progress

• Renewed dialogue with NATO and other allies and partners on strategic issues.

• Announced a plan to responsibly end the war in Iraq.
• Developed a comprehensive new strategy on Afghanistan and Pakistan and authorized deployment of more than 21,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan.
• Announced creation of a Joint Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record for members of the U.S. Armed Forces to improve quality of medical care.

DISABILITY

Progress

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act included a number of provisions of particular concern to people with disabilities.

• The Act included $500 million to help the Social Security Administration reduce its backlog in processing disability applications.
• The Act supplied $12.2 billion in funding to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA);
• The Act also provided $87 billion to states to bolster their Medicaid programs during the downturn; and,
• The Act provided over $500 million in funding for vocational rehabilitation services to help with job training, education and placement.

CIVIL RIGHTS

Progress

• The President signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, restoring basic protections against pay discrimination for women and other workers.

EDUCATION

Progress

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act invested heavily in education both as a way to provide jobs now and lay the foundation for long-term prosperity.

• The Act includes $5 billion for early learning programs, including Head Start, Early Head Start, child care, and programs for children with special needs.
• The Act also provides $77 billion for reforms to strengthen elementary and secondary education, including $48.6 billion to stabilize state education budgets (of which $8.8 billion may be used for other government services) and to encourage states to:

• Make improvements in teacher effectiveness and ensure that all schools have highly-qualified teachers;
• Make progress toward college and career-ready standards and rigorous assessments that will improve both teaching and learning;
• Improve achievement in low-performing schools, through intensive support and effective interventions; and
• Gather information to improve student learning, teacher performance, and college and career readiness through enhanced data systems.

• The Act provides $5 billion in competitive funds to spur innovation and chart ambitious reform to close the achievement gap.
• The Act includes over $30 billion to address college affordability and improve access to higher education.

ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT

"So we have a choice to make. We can remain one of the world's leading importers of foreign oil, or we can make the investments that would allow us to become the world's leading exporter of renewable energy. We can let climate change continue to go unchecked, or we can help stop it. We can let the jobs of tomorrow be created abroad, or we can create those jobs right here in America and lay the foundation for lasting prosperity."

-President Obama, March 19, 2009

Progress

• The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act included more than $60 billion in clean energy investments that will jump-start our economy and build the clean energy jobs of tomorrow:

• $11 billion for a bigger, better, and smarter grid that will move renewable energy from the rural places it is produced to the cities where it is mostly used, as well as for 40 million smart meters to be deployed in American homes.
• $5 billion for low-income home weatherization projects.
• $4.5 billion to green federal buildings and cut our energy bill, saving taxpayers billions of dollars.
• $6.3 billion for state and local renewable energy and energy efficiency efforts.
• $600 million in green job training programs – $100 million to expand line worker training programs and $500 million for green workforce training.
• $2 billion in competitive grants to develop the next generation of batteries to store energy.

• Increasing, for the first time in more than a decade, the fuel economy standards for Model Year 2011 for cars and trucks so they will get better mileage, saving drivers money and spurring companies to develop more innovative products.

• The President issued a memorandum to the Department of Energy to implement more aggressive efficiency standards for common household appliances, like dishwashers and refrigerators. Through this step, over the next three decades, we’ll save twice the amount of energy produced by all the coal-fired power plants in America in any given year.
• Supporting the first steps of a legally-binding treaty to reduce mercury emissions worldwide.
• On Earth Day 2009, the President unveiled a program to develop the renewable energy projects on the waters of our Outer Continental Shelf that produce electricity from wind, wave, and ocean currents. These regulations will enable, for the first time ever, the nation to tap into our ocean’s vast sustainable resources to generate clean energy in an environmentally sound and safe manner.

FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY

Progress

• The President signed an Executive Order on government contracting to fight waste and abuse.
• The President launched Recovery.gov to track spending from the Recovery Act, an unprecedented step to provide transparency and accountability through technology.
• The President wrote to the congressional leadership calling on them to pass statutory Pay-As-You-Go rules so that any new non-emergency tax cut or entitlement expansion offset in the budget.
• The President signed the Weapons Systems Acquisition Reform Act to stop fraud and wasteful spending in the defense procurement and contracting system.

FOREIGN POLICY

Progress

• Ordered the closure of the prison at Guantanamo Bay and a review of our detention and interrogation policy, and prohibited the use of torture.

• Appointed Special Envoys for Climate Change, Southwest Asia, the Middle East, Sudan, and a Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

• Announced a plan to responsibly end the War in Iraq.
• Announced a new strategy for Pakistan and Afghanistan.
• Announced a strategy to address the international nuclear threat.
• Agreed to negotiation of a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia.
• Established a new "U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue".
• Announced new policy steps towards Cuba.

HEALTH CARE

"I suffer no illusions that this will be an easy process. It will be hard. But I also know that nearly a century after Teddy Roosevelt first called for reform, the cost of our health care has weighed down our economy and the conscience of our nation long enough. So let there be no doubt: health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year."

– President Barack Obama, February 24, 2009

Progress

• The President signed the Children’s Health Insurance Reauthorization Act on February 4, 2009, which provides quality health care to 11 million kids – 4 million who were previously uninsured.
• The President’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act protects health coverage for 7 million Americans who lose their jobs through a 65 percent COBRA subsidy to make coverage affordable.
• The Recovery Act also invests $19 billion in computerized medical records that will help to reduce costs and improve quality while ensuring patients’ privacy.
• The Recovery Act also provides:

• $1 billion for prevention and wellness to improve America’s health and help to reduce health care costs;
• $1.1 billion for research to give doctors tools to make the best treatment decisions for their patients by providing objective information on the relative benefits of treatments; and
• $500 million for health workforce to help train the next generation of doctors and nurses.

TAXES

Progress

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act included a broad range of tax cuts aimed at making the tax code more fair and supporting the middle class:

• 95% of all working families will receive a tax cut
• 70% of the tax benefits goes to the middle 60% of American workers
• 2 million families will be lifted out of poverty by the tax cuts in the Recovery Act
• More than $150 billion in tax cuts will help low-income and vulnerable households during the economic recovery
• About 1 Million jobs will be created or saved by these tax cuts alone