Challenging man President Barack Obama inherited from his predecessor were daunting. President George W. Bush’s eight years in the White House culminated in a financial meltdown, a foreclosure crisis, and an economic collapse, all of which arose during his final years in office. The nation was entrenched in two foreign wars with no end in sight, Bush had done little to combat the looming threat of climate change, and global opinion of the United States was at an all-time low. In November, Republicans capitalized on the fact that Obama was unable to entirely clean up the enormous, putrefying mess that had been dumped in his lap. No one could have reassembled the nation’s woeful economy in just two years, and Obama warned of as much before he took office. But voters, many of them out of work or underemployed, were understandably frustrated, and the Democrats suffered their wrath. Now, Republicans are sweeping right back into office, where they’ll try their damnedest to undo everything the president has accomplished.
Those accomplishments have been significant. Whether you agree with his politics or not, President Obama has succeeded in seeing through the passage of several historic acts. There was the economic stimulus package, tight new financial regulations, and the health care overhaul. More recently, during the lame duck sessions, there was the Food Safety Modernization Act, a repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and an arms treaty with Russia. Other politicians have attempted to accomplish similar feats for years or even decades, but without success. In addition, combat operations in Iraq have ended, and Obama plans to begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan this summer. Maybe the president deserved that 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, after all. Topping it all off, at the end of the year, Obama struck a deal with leading Republicans to extend Bush-era tax cuts, while also extending jobless benefits for the unemployed. It was a compromise that tasted pretty sour for lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, and it’s seen by some as one of the president’s most dubious accomplishments.
Obama was forced to make concessions in order to secure sorely needed jobless benefits before the end-of-the-year deadline, it’s troubling that Bush’s steadfast policy of rewarding the rich for being wealthy will continue another two years. While Tea Partiers call Obama a socialist and accuse Democrats of trying to rob the rich of their hard-earned affluence, the truth is that taxes have remained at historic lows. In a recent article in The Huffington Post, writer Sam Harris pointed out that the nation has rarely known such modest taxation for its wealthiest citizens.“Throughout the 1950s—a decade for which American conservatives pretend to feel a harrowing sense of nostalgia—the marginal tax rate for the wealthy was over 90 percent. In fact, prior to the 1980s it never dipped below 70 percent,” Harris wrote. “Since 1982, however, it has come down by half. In the meantime, the average net worth of the richest 1 percent of Americans has doubled (to $18.5 million), while that of the poorest 40 percent has fallen by 63 percent (to $2,200).” As a feeble defense for giving immense tax cuts to the rich (who need it the least) while offering miniscule relief to the poor (who need it the most), conservatives have long claimed that building the wealth of the rich has a trickle-down effect, enabling them to hire more employees and pay higher wages. If only it actually worked out that way. As a recent issue of the N.H. Gazette pointed out, Bush’s tax cuts were less than successful at stimulating economic growth during his own presidency.
As “The rate of job growth between 2001 and 2007 was less than half what it had been during previous periods of economic expansion. What’s more, during that period real wages and salaries grew at less than half the rate of earlier economic expansions” (the Gazette cites a November episode of “CBS Moneywatch” for the data). If you still need more convincing, just watch Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Nov. 30 filibuster speech, in which he pointed out that the top 1 percent of income earners take home more than 20 percent of all U.S. income—“more than the entire bottom 50 percent.”
Challenges that lie ahead for President Obama are just as daunting as the ones he faced two years ago, and now he’ll have a Republican majority in the House to contend with, along with a 2012 election on the horizon. So will Obama stick to his guns and promote the policies he believes are best for the nation, or will he capitulate to his rivals in the hopes of salvaging votes for his reelection bid? We can only hope the answer is the former, because doing right by America is more important than clinging to that hot seat in Washington, D.C., and there’s much more for President Obama to accomplish in the next two years.
