11 Ways Barack Obama is Way Worse Than George W. Bush 1. Spending Both were profligate spenders. While Bush had Medicare Part D, and largely unfunded wars, President Obama has doubled down with an $812 stimulus package and ObamaCare – which has been taxing us without providing benefits. Obama signed onto the 2009 budget exploding spending, which he only slightly scaled back. While W’s average yearly deficit was $250.7 billion, President Obama’s has been $1.273 trillion, and he has racked up over $6 trillion in national debt. Yet Obama once called Bush’s debt “irresponsible." Now, about job creation... 2. Job Creation Both had recessions to deal with. W. came into office with a recession after the dotcom bubble burst and then 9/11 hit. However, he was able to generate 52 straight months of job growth, before a housing market collapse. Obama’s average unemployment has been 8.8% (Bush’s was 5.27%), labor force participation rate is at the lowest since Oct. 1978 at 63.4%, without the benefit of much job growth - the country has netted 270,000 jobs since 2009, and the majority of Obama’s job creation has been temp & part-time jobs. No hype, no contest. Okay, let’s talk about war… 3. War While W’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan had bipartisan backing, and with prominent Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi having stated their beliefs that Iraq had wmds, Obama feels he has the authority to send troops to potentially die for the country without Congressional representation. Joe Biden said W. should be impeached if he unilaterally took the U.S. to war with Iran, but the Nobel Peace Prize winning president may do it twice with Libya and Syria, while racking up 74% of the U.S. fatalities in Afghanistan. What about civil liberties? 4. Civil Liberties The Patriot Act was opposed by Democrats and many Independents, Libertarians and libertarian-leaning Republicans, even in the aftermath of 9/11. Obama warned about the Patriot Act as a Senator in 2005, but signed onto it twice as president, without major alterations – by autopen. On Guantanamo Bay, he promised he would shut it down in his first year in office, but it remains open. And as far as domestic spying, the Bush-era breaches of Constitutional protections can’t touch Obama’s brazenly lawless NSA programs like PRISM. How about corruption? 5. Corruption While the main bone of contention for Democrats that Bush was corrupt was the refrain of Haliburton and no-bid contracts, President Obama too hired Haliburton subsidiary KBR with a no-bid contract worth $568 million. Additionally, the mantra “No Blood for Oil” proved to be an ill-founded concern when post-liberation Iraq was opened up for oil contracts. President Obama passed a massive healthcare package, like Bush, but exempted many unions and friendly corporations, not to mention politicians like himself. Obvious green energy kickbacks for party supporters include Solyndra, BrightSource, and NRG Energy. The stimulus package was rife with pet projects and pork. This leads into scandals 6. Scandals The most egregious scandal of the Bush era was Abu Ghraib, which ran as a headline on the New York Times frontpage 47 times. Fast & Furious has drawn allusions to similar programs under Bush; however, the “gunwalking” under Obama led to untracked “assault rifles” falling into the hands of drug cartels, which promptly used them to murder hundreds of Mexicans and border patrol agent Brian Terry. Benghazi, seen as an unacceptable scandal by many, is where a US ambassador was murdered with no serious rescue operation ordered until much later... after stand down orders halted rescue protocols. The IRS’ profiling of conservative groups, and the NSA’s illegal surveillance programs, are also scandals that are not perceived to be “phony” to the majority of the informed public, as polled. Now, let’s look at a key campaign promise… 7. Lobbyists Lobbyists were said to be a main problem in Bush-era by the Obama administration, and Obama promised to put an end to it upon his arrival to Washington. Yet he continued hiring lobbyists and even secretly met with them off-the-record. Additionally, members of Obama’s economic team were plucked from Wall Street, and particularly, from Goldman Sachs, like Treasury Chief of Staff Mark Patterson, after the financial titan lucratively backed his first election. As for another big deal that makes Bush seem like a piker… 8. Whistleblowers Whistleblowers have been suppressed more under Obama than under any other president. The current Commander-in-Chief has gone after multiple whistleblowers in the NSA, including Edward Snowden. Witnesses to Benghazi have been hidden from public questioning, and the #2 man in Libya Gregory Hicks was ostensibly demoted for even talking to Republican Congress members about what happened. The administration has unleashed the DOJ on the ATF, journalists at the AP, and Fox News reporter James Rosen. Back to the economy… 9. Economic Inequality Economic inequality has worsened under Obama. As Emmanuel Saez found, under Bush from 2002 to 2007, the top 1% of earners captured 65% of all income growth. Under Obama from 2009-2010, the top 1% captured 93% of all income growth in the country. It could be posed that this widening disparity is a reflection of regulatory barriers to small business growth being erected in the private sector, the tax write-offs and loopholes for corporations that still persist (including in green energy), and the flood of easy money that is channeled to Wall Street, but erodes the value of the dollar on Main Street. Need I say more? So this leads naturally to GDP growth… 10. GDP Growth George W. Bush’s real GDP or economic growth was a subpar 1.67% (the historical average from 1980-2000 was 3.405%), but President Obama is the worst post-WWII president in such terms at 1.075%. In fact, in the last quarter of 2012, the economy Obama helps set policy for experienced negative GDP growth of 0.1%, also known as “contraction.” This year, the Obama reworked the formula the government uses to come up with GDP growth numbers by adding Hollywood movies and other intellectual property sources to the equation. Finally… 11. Race Relations Race relations seem to be getting worse under President Obama, contrary to expectations upon the election of America’s first black president. While there are no sound reasons to believe George W. Bush’s policies were substantively racist – it seemed a foregone conclusion that relations would improve under Obama. However, only 10% polled by Rasmussen believe race relations are improving. President Obama may share King’s “dream,” but as far as his record goes, it is too often being judged by the color of his skin, and not by the character of its content.
Posted on: Sat, 31 Aug 2013 12:59:43 +0000
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