Obama's Record-Where We Are After Four Years

I was asked recently to research where we are as a country after four years of Barack Obama as president. I found that while there is tons of information out there about the Obama presidency, it wasn't all in one place, so I compiled a short summary. While this list is hardly comprehensive (I didn't even get into foreign policy, which actually could be the area of this president's greatest failure), I think it catalogs pretty well the reasons that it would be an unprecedented disaster to rehire this president:

Unemployment

• Under President Obama, the U.S. economy has created a net 415,000 private-sector jobs – less than 0.2% of the 155 million-member American workforce...the workforce itself has shrunk dramatically in size since Obama took office. Labor force participation is at 63.5 percent, its lowest level (excluding 2012) since 1981. In other words, a large chunk of Americans have simply given up looking for work...(The unemployment rate)..would be more than 10 percent if the labor force were the same size it was when Obama took office. (http://blog.heritage.org/2012/09/06/fact-check-have-4-5-million-new-jobs-been-created-under-obama/)
• The economy has lost 316,000 jobs under President Barack Obama, though most of the job losses happened at the beginning of Obama’s presidency during the height of the Great Recession...)  (http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/08/report-negative-job-growth-under-obama/#ixzz29sxQoA59)
• Veronique de Rugy, senior fellow at the Mercatus Center... told the Daily Caller News Foundation...“It is the slowest recovery ever,” she added. “I would claim that there’s really no recovery at all...“The last twelve months have seen the slowest wage growth ever. We also have the slowest economic growth compared to any other recovery.”

(http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/08/report-negative-job-growth-under-obama/#ixzz29sxQoA59)

Job Wages

• “...while 60 percent of the jobs lost during the 2008-2009 financial crisis were in middle income occupations, the vast majority – 58 percent – of jobs created under President Obama are low-wage. Those jobs include “retail sales, food preparation, home health and customer service.”

(http://nation.foxnews.com/low-wage-jobs/2012/09/09/study-58-jobs-created-under-obama-are-low-wage#ixzz29syoSuTJ)

• ...Since the economic recovery technically began in June 2009, median household income has dropped 5.7 percent. And since Obama took office in January 2009, the median income has fallen 8.2 percent, from $55,198 to $50,678.

(http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/26/household-income-down-82-percent-since-obama-took-office-study-shows/#ixzz29szsEao9)

Federal Deficit

• . Fiscal year 2012 marked the fourth consecutive year of $1 trillion deficits.  (http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/10/federal-spending-by-the-numbers-2012)

• If each … federal taxpayers were given responsibility for paying off an equal share of the new federal debt added since Obama was inaugurated, they would each need to pay about $64,219.88. (http://cnsnews.com/news/article/64000-question-how-much-has-debt-increased-taxpayer-under-obama)

Gas Prices

• Average retail gasoline prices have more than doubled under President Obama, according to government statistics, rising from $1.84 per gallon to $3.85 per gallon. (http://cnsnews.com/news/article/gasoline-prices-more-double-under-obama-184-385)

Welfare

• The welfare reform of 1996 requires that after three months on food stamps, recipients be engaged in some kind of work activity for at least 20 hours a week. Tucked away in the mammoth 2009 so-called “stimulus” spending bill was the suspension of this requirement for able-bodied adults with no children.

The result has been that between 2008 and 2010, the number of these able-bodied adults on food stamps doubled—from 1.9 million to 3.9 million, according to CRS. (Total participation is now at roughly 47 million, or one in seven Americans.)

• Today, the federal government spends nearly $1 trillion a year on approximately 80 different federal welfare programs. If President Obama has his way, spending will only continue to increase despite welfare already being the fastest-growing part of government spending. (http://blog.heritage.org/2012/09/19/food-stamp-participation-doubled-among-able-bodied-adults-after-obama-suspended-work-requirement/)

Stimulus Waste

• The 2009 stimulus set aside $80 billion to subsidize politically preferred energy projects. Since that time, 1,900 investigations have been opened to look into stimulus waste, fraud, and abuse (although not all are linked to the green-energy funds), and nearly 600 convictions have been made. Of that $80 billion in clean energy loans, grants, and tax credits, at least 10 percent has gone to companies that have since either gone bankrupt or are circling the drain.  (http://blog.heritage.org/2012/10/18/president-obamas-taxpayer-backed-green-energy-failures/)

Life Issues

• Obamacare Tramples Religious Freedom: The Obamacare anti-conscience mandate requires all insurance plans to cover, at no charge, abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives, and sterilization. Only houses of worship qualify for a religious exemption—leaving faith-based hospitals, schools, soup kitchens, and many others to provide such mandated coverage despite religious and moral objections. (http://www.heritage.org/research/factsheets/2012/06/let-religious-freedom-ring-stop-the-assault-on-our-first-freedom)
• “In March 2009, President Obama issued an executive order to allow federal funding of research that requires the killing of human embryos.(http://www.nrlc.org/Records/obamarecord.pdf)
• In 2011, President Obama indicated he would veto the entire federal spending bill -- forcing a government shutdown -- rather than accept a provision cutting funding to Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider. (http://www.nrlc.org/Records/obamarecord.pdf)

Religious Liberty

• Liberal Social Agenda Driving Out Good Samaritans: In the wake of state laws redefining marriage, faith-based adoption and foster care providers in Massachusetts, Illinois, and the District of Columbia were forced to close their doors rather than violate their deeply held beliefs about marriage and the placement of children with married couples. In Washington, the White House refused to renew a grant for a faith-based organization effectively serving human trafficking victims because the group could not, on the basis of conscience, refer their clients for abortions.

(http://www.heritage.org/research/factsheets/2012/06/let-religious-freedom-ring-stop-the-assault-on-our-first-freedom)