The Shortcomings of Barack Obama’s Presidency

On January 20, 2009, Barack Hussein Obama, was elected into office as the 44th President of the United States of America. Citizens were apt to vote for him because of his ability to identify with a younger crowd, his excellent oratory skills, the excitement of breaking a well-known race barrier and, of course, his promise for change in the country that is little more than 200 years new. As the economic state of this global powerhouse began its steady decline, Barack Obama vowed that he would turn around the country’s recession, reduce the United States’ $10.9 trillion debt, and overall leave its citizens more prosperous.

As can be expected, fixing an economy that is facing its largest struggle in decades is no easy task, and cannot be fixed overnight. However, his current plans to promote ‘bold action and big ideas’ seem to fall a bit short of a reasonable solution for a well-developed free market society. Though some may see hope in a government that provides trillion-dollar bailout plans, socialized health care, and other financial mechanisms which put the citizens’ comfort and well-being in the hands of our Congress and representatives, I, as a middle-class citizen who has first-handedly witnessed the situation of some of America’s in-need individuals, cannot see how any of his current ideas will create jobs, lower the cost of living, or stabilize the value of our dollar. In this essay, I would like to go over a few of the reasons why I did not vote for our current 44th president, as well as discuss what I believe are red flags after the fact that may affect the country’s next four years.

This year was the first that I was able to vote in a presidential election. While not immediately thrilled with either the Democratic or Republican candidate, I did my duty as an American and read up on the options that were available to me. Immediately, there were a few things on the Obama-Biden campaign site (http://www.barackobama.com/issues) that I found to be confusing and debatable.

Middle class families will see their taxes cut – and no family making less than $250,000 will see their taxes increase.

Not only has Obama since changed this statement to “under $150,000,” but he failed to see that his extreme hike on rich Americans is detrimental to the job growth of America. He has promised to almost double the tax on rich Americans from 20% to 39%. Unfortunately, many citizens that make $150,000 and over are using their money to build small businesses and employ workers. With this extra, dramatic change (39% of $150,000 is almost $60,000), many cannot afford to employ workers of the middle-class variety, destroying thousands of jobs. If taxes were to simply be lowered all across the board, our government could benefit from thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of additional taxpayers and receive even more money for America’s outstanding debt than with money earned only from the country’s higher-class. Unfortunately, higher-class citizens aren’t the only ones taking the burden of the changed tax policy; there is speculation that California, which holds the highest debt amount of any state, will have its citizens paying the advanced tax rate starting at only $47,000.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden will enact a windfall profits tax on excessive oil company profits to give American families an immediate $1,000 emergency energy rebate to help families pay rising bills.

President Obama promises a $1,000 per year tax benefit, made possible by creating higher taxes on oil companies. I did the math on this one, knowing that the price of gasoline was bound to go up in this case, to make up for its lack of profit. If the price of gasoline were to rise even 25 cents per gallon, the average American citizen that drives 10,000 miles per year would be purchasing around an extra $150 of gasoline. However, to adequately restore profits from a tax increase that provides $1,000 for hundreds of millions of households, the price of gasoline could jump several dollars per gallon. For each dollar per gallon that the price raises, average Americans will see an additional $450 going towards their travel expenses. Suddenly, $1,000 doesn’t seem like very much of a tax break.

If I was not convinced of my opinion of him at this time, several comments made during Barack Obama’s speeches removed any doubt from my mind that, economically, he was not a good choice for our country. In November, he told The San Francisco Chronicle that he planned on bankrupting the coal industry with heavy emissions taxes. “So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.” Currently, coal provides roughly 49% of electrical power in the United States. Needless to say, charging this extremely large and important business with bankrupting emission fees wouldn’t do much to improve the economy, or American citizens’ overall quality of living.

His economic drawbacks aren’t the only (though are enough) reason that I was very unimpressed with America’s presidential choice. His campaign vigorously frowned upon lobbyist involvement in legislation; as an Illinois Senator, his finance records show that “almost two-thirds of the money he raised for his campaigns — $296,000 of $461,000 — came from PACs, corporate contributions, or unions, according to Illinois Board of Elections records. He tapped financial services firms, real estate developers, health care providers, oil companies, and many other corporate interests, the records show,” says to Scott Helman in the Boston Globe. Obama has boasted that he is the only candidate who hadn’t ‘taken a dime from Washington’s lobbyists,’ yet 38 law firm members (10 of which are former federal lobbyists) were paid $138 million to lobby the federal government, and had pledged to raise at least $3.5 million for his campaign.* To boot, at least four of his cabinet and official picks have been questionable in their lobbyist and other affairs. I cannot say that I’m very trusting of a candidate that says one thing, then does another, regardless of his charisma.

In addition to his past with lobbyists, Obama’s current support of Timothy Geithner, newly sworn-in Secretary of the Treasury, is also questionable. It has been confirmed that Giethner had evaded a minimum of $35,000 of self-employment taxes, as well as an additional amount of nearly $15,000 for the years 2003 and 2004 that remained unpaid until he was offered his current position. However, since he has been sworn in, President Obama claimed that Geithner was doing an “outstanding job” on Jay Leno’s The Tonight Show, and that he carries on “with good grace and humor.” Obama’s transition staff said of the situation that it (the 15 percent tax) was a common error for American employees of the I.M.F.,-International Monetary Fund.* Perhaps these monetary “errors” don’t have a direct effect on how Timothy Geithner does his job, but they do indicate an ironic failure of integrity, considering the nature of his position.

Finally, I was rather disconcerted to hear that there would be up to a $2-3 trillion bailout program, in addition to the $700 billion plan prior to his election. I was even more perturbed by Barack Obama’s promise to cut the federal deficit in half by the last year of his first term, though he planned first to increase it by almost 30%. To my knowledge, none of this money has yet been set aside for the use of small businesses, and instead focuses on keeping afloat the businesses that have fallen under due to their own inability to properly finance and manage it or its employees.

Certainly the issues mentioned are not the only ones affecting our country, but they are major ones that very much influenced my opinion on President Obama. While he is certainly a younger, more interesting candidate for U.S. Presidency, and marks a unique point in history by becoming America’s first black president, I think that his inexperience undoubtedly shows in his promises, plans, and actions as of the writing of this article. He has spoken more than 60% of the country into believing in his “change for America,” but I feel that I’m not alone in questioning the exact type of change that he plans on bringing.

Unquoted Sources:
*USAToday
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-04-15-obama_N.htm

* New York Times- The Caucus
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/geithner-choice-for-treasury-questioned-on-his-tax-returns/