Opinion: Our country is better off than it was four years ago
Photo from Whitehouse.gov
By the College Democrats
Four years ago, the United States decided on a new direction. They voted for a new path of change and hope. Barack Obama swept into office with a message of progress and reform. He faced issues of unparalleled proportions. A country suffering from the worst global economic crisis since the Great Depression, embroiled in two foreign wars and plenty of domestic issues to deal with. President Obama took on every issue with poise, and has proudly led our country for the last four years. For those reasons, we wholeheartedly support Barack Obama for four more years.
In January 2009, President Obama entered office with dire economic conditions. U.S. banks were on the verge of collapse, the auto industry was in bankruptcy and the middle class was taking the worst of the pain. Unemployment was rising, and the country needed to get back on the right path. Working across the aisle, President Obama led the country on a path away from the brink. He worked with Congress to bail out the auto industry, something Mitt Romney would have let happen. This action saved more then one million US jobs and allowed one of the biggest industries in country to continue doing business.
Additionally, President Obama worked with Congress to get the country back to work, by signing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. This helped get people new jobs, but it also gave tax breaks to millions of working families. The unemployment rate was stopped from getting worse. The country has now seen 31 straight months of growth, the unemployment rate is the lowest it has been since before the President even took office and the United States has the fastest growing economy out of the richest countries of the world, coming back from a global recession better then the U.K., Canada and Germany.
One of the biggest financial burdens on our nation’s debt was the continuation of two foreign wars charged on a credit card. The cost went beyond financial burden however, including far too many of the lives of our men and women in uniform. Since the President took office, we have seen the ending of the Iraq War and a timeline set for the end of the war in Afghanistan. However, not only has all of this been done with grace and humility, our heroes (soldiers) in Iraq came home with honor and, with the leadership of President Obama, the soldiers in Afghanistan will do the same. Ending these wars allowed our country to move forward and to start even thinking about paying down the national debt.
Apart from saving the economy and ending our two foreign wars, President Obama has a list of accomplishments that could rival a two-term president. To start off, he signed the Lily Ledbetter Act, allowing women to have further rights to equal pay. He worked with Congress to pass the Affordable Care Act, making sure that no one in this country could be denied insurance because of pre-existing conditions and children can stay on their parents’ plan until they are 26 and strengthening Medicare. He worked with the auto industry to raise the fuel emissions, as well as invested in new, innovative green technology, making sure our planet is greener. He started the Race to the Top program, allowing schools and states across the nation to have more flexibility than No Child Left Behind, revolutionizing our education system. He repealed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, allowing openly gay men and women to serve in our armed forces. He has improved our image abroad, making sure that America is no longer the world’s policeman, inflicting our will upon other countries. He weakened our greatest terrorist threat, Al-Qaeda, by ordering the killing of Osama bin Laden and using militant drones to further weaken our enemies while keeping our men and women out of harms way. In other words, our country is safer, healthier, cleaner, more equal and getting back to work. Another way of putting it: progress.
Not only has President Obama done all of these things, but he also has a plan for the next four years to keep the progress going. He wants to work with Congress to reform the tax code so that everyone pays his or her fair share. He wants to reinvest in the middle class, to get them back to work and to make sure that they have the training they need for high-tech jobs that will be the wave of the future. He wants to give tax breaks to companies willing to bring jobs back to the United States, not to those who ship them overseas. He wants to make sure that every child in our country has an opportunity to go to college if they want to. He wants to continue to provide for our seniors by strengthening Social Security and Medicare. He wants to reduce the national debt by four trillion dollars. He wants to do all of this while making sure that our country remains the greatest country in the world.
He has done all of this and wants to continue this path while being faced with an opposition that has not been seen by another president since Abraham Lincoln. While handling borderline racist criticisms of being Kenyan, Muslim, or a communist out to take over our country from the elites in our society, President Obama has also had to deal with one other thing: huge expectations. When Barack Obama was campaigning four years ago, it seemed that a vote for him would mean that our country would be turned around in an instant, that the day he gave the Oath of Office, we would suddenly see our problems melt away. And when we didn’t, the right pounced, saying that he had failed just one week into office.
Yes, times are tough and they have been for a while. However, our country is far better off then it was four years ago, our progress is going forward, not back to the policies that didn’t work thirty years ago. They didn’t work then and they will not work now. We need to stay the course, we need to continue on the path of progress and make sure that we are ready for the future as it comes. President Obama has the leadership to take us there and while he didn’t wave a magical wand and make it all better at once, he has done what was needed. He has made us stronger, better, but most of all, proud to call ourselves Americans once again. And for that, we proudly support Barack Obama for four more years.
