A recurring theme of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s presidential election campaign is that President Barack Obama has failed to deliver the change that he promised in 2008, or that the president has simply delivered the wrong kind of change. The problem with Romney’s claim isn’t that it is cynical and disingenuous. It is wrong. Today America looks fundamentally different than it did when Obama took office in January 2008. And the changes are mostly for the better.
In 2008, President-elect Obama was welcomed to office by a free-falling economy and a failing auto industry. He responded by passing a stimulus bill that many derided as excessive. Much of the stimulus, however, was allocated to stave off mass layoffs of state employees across the country. What’s more, tax cuts comprised more than a third of the stimulus. Many economists now believe the stimulus was actually too small to be efficient. In addition, the president orchestrated the bailout of Detroit automakers, saving at least one million American jobs while also forcing the inefficient and complacent automakers to streamline efficiency.
Obama also passed a comprehensive health-care reform bill, something both Democrat and Republican presidents have been trying to do for over a century. The president’s signature piece of legislation, the Affordable Care Act, extends health insurance coverage to 30 million Americans while reducing the federal budget deficit. It also keeps insurance companies from denying Americans health insurance coverage because they have pre-existing conditions and protects Americans from being dropped by their insurance companies due to a lifetime benefit limit.
To help ensure the stability of the financial sector for future generations, the president championed and signed into law the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law, which is the most sweeping financial regulation legislation since the Great Depression.
The president also ended the United States’ combat presence in Iraq, allowing tens of thousands of soldiers to come home to their families and saving billions of dollars by ending an unfinanced war.
Obama has raised America’s image internationally and deftly executed American foreign policy. When given actionable intelligence on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, he acted. Intelligence experts estimated that there was a 50-50 chance that bin Laden was living in a compound just a mile from Pakistan’s largest military academy in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Advisors put forth multiple possible plans for action. Vice President Joe Biden and then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates—who held the same position under former President George W. Bush—voted against a special operations raid on the compound. Ultimately, the president ordered the raid on the compound, overriding both his vice president and secretary of defense to ensure that bin Laden was brought to justice.
Perhaps most important, Obama has redoubled the nation’s commitment to education by providing incentives to schools that improve effectiveness, easing access to student loans, and maintaining low interest rates on government-backed student loans. The federal government’s renewed commitment to education will help enable a more skilled workforce for generations to come.
Most recently, the president instituted prosecutorial discretion in the deportation of illegal immigrants, ensuring that the Department of Homeland Security’s limited resources are not wasted on deporting young, law-abiding and educated illegal immigrants. To be sure, Congress should enact these changes. Congressional partisanship, however, has stymied the passage of the DREAM Act—which would institute a policy that is very similar to the president’s—for over a decade. The role that immigrants play in our nation is simply too great to keep educated, law-abiding immigrants from gaining citizenship. Immigrants or their children have started more than 40 percent of all Fortune 500 companies. We can’t afford to lose the contributions that immigrants make to our country. President Obama’s policy ensures we won’t.
In an era of the 24-hour news cycle, it’s easy for us voters to be forgetful about the progress we’ve made as a nation since 2008. But from national security to health care to education, our country is better off than it was just four years ago. Today we’re better positioned for American success throughout the 21st century. In fact, the myth that President Obama has had a changeless first term is just that—a myth.
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