The Obama Review

Over the past 6 years, America has seen some of it’s worst times when it comes to it’s leadership.  We’ve had leaders such as President George W. Bush take office and just made America into something that it was never meant to be.  He took a multi-hundred billion dollar surplus and made it into a multi-trillion dollar debt.  We thought we needed new leadership to fix this, and that’s why Obama was voted into office.  Nearly 3 years later, what has changed for the good?  So far I’ve seen nothing changing for the good, and only for the worse.  I’m Matt Weldon with the TOG Network and here’s my Obama Review.

When Obama was campaigning for his presidential election he was pushing for the word “change”.  These changes were signified by the belief that he would change the housing market, unemployment, the debt crisis, and America as a whole, for the good.  Another subject he was pushing for was making a better health care system.  A system that would allow good healthcare to the lower classes of society, and even the middle classes that were struggling with financial problems.  He only pushed for 1 of the things I mentioned before…the health care.  The problem with the reformed healthcare system, it won’t take full effect for another 3-10 years, and that’s if it isn’t conflicted in the future to be terminated or degraded.

It’s been quite sometime since the new healthcare system was passed, so what has Obama done since?  He’s killed America’s most wanted, but Bin Laden has only made threats since 9/11/2001, so it wasn’t a huge deal to kill him nearly 10 years later…at least in my perception it isn’t.  So what else has Obama done for this country since he was elected into the office?  I honestly can’t think of anything.  I’ve tried to think back to the days of 2005, and everyone was still discussing the same events.  The war in the middle east, jobs, money, healthcare, and better leadership.  It’s all the same even in 2011.  So since nothing has changed that much, lets go back to 2008, during Obama’s election campaign.

It was the summer of 2008, and the entire nation was talking about the possibility of the first black or female president of the United States of America.  It was a big discussion because no one thought it could happen at this point in time, because our country had voted white males into the office since the 1700′s.  The other discussions were mostly about the differences between the republicans and democrats, especially the situations of debt, unemployment, gas prices and housing market.  The republicans and democrats had the same idea that anyone could predict,fixing the tax, and or spending.  Now these were the prime arguments for any presidential candidate, but Obama seemed to focus on this more than anything before he was President.  He wanted to raise taxes for the wealthy to an amount that could change the country in a somewhat dramatic way, and he wanted to cut spending for programs that would also change the country in a somewhat dramatic way.  He even emphasized on the gas price problem, and seemed very empathetic to the people complaining about gas prices.  He even told some stories that he had heard about people not being able to drive to work anymore because of  gas prices.  Towards the time of October, or even after he was elected, his attitude towards all of this changed.  He started talking more and more about healthcare reform, and in almost every audio and video recording of him, you hear him say “Healthcare reform” multiple times.  When asked about the gas price situation, he seemed nearly careless.

So how does a man who talks nonstop about changing, and curing this country of it’s problem, to only talking nonstop about healthcare reform?  Not only that, but after the healthcare reform, he didn’t seem to do much at all for the country.  He only made speeches about the war, oil price fixes, and unemployment status.  He hasn’t seemed to make an effort to fix any of this, other than May of 2011, he made a quiet uproar about the death of Bin Laden.  He fixed the burden of knowing the man that killed 1000s of Americans has been killed, but how does that help us as an individual as a person?  It doesn’t unfortunately…

So in this review how has Obama done as an American president?  I would say he did par, and barely.  He didn’t do much about the problems that need to be fixed immediately, such as the debt crisis, and unemployment.  He only fixed the healthcare problem which doesn’t even effect a lot of the country, and honestly this healthcare reform could hurt the debt crisis, which would lead to other problems that we may have no foreseen yet.

The debt of America is climbing everyday, and we are heading into the negative 15,000,000,000,000 mark.  How can we even imagine to make that number go down to a surplus?  We’ll need a president with the right power, and a congress with an open mind.  So far Obama does not seem to be that president.

—-Part 2—-

The reason there is a Part 2 to this blog is because there was about a 2 week long break in between parts.  I decided to wait and post this later because there was talk on CNN.com about Congress and the President meeting to discuss plans on fixing the debt crisis, and this is just something little I want to add in, and give my opinion on.

Behind closed doors, that were marked specifically to not let the press in, Congress and President Obama discussed the debt crisis.  Very little details have been given out, but this is something the whole country should be very interested in, and the people of America seem to be almost blinded that this is even happening.  Regardless of the fact that the meeting isn’t being broadcasted, they should at least be speaking their opinion.  Congress can’t come up with all the decisions themselves.  Besides that though, lets go into what they should be discussing, and I’m sure many of you will agree with what I have to say.

Some people say they should stop spending so much on the War in the middle east, and that they should stop putting so much money into other programs for health, but that only takes up a small fraction of our total spending.  Now that is only 1 solution, and the basics of this idea is to cut spending.  If we cut spending to a dramatic amount that it wouldn’t effect the people’s living standards this could help in a way of good, but it would not be enough to get us out of ~15,000,000,000,000 debt crisis.  There will need to be something else, and it is the topic that most people are talking about…Taxes.  Some people say only some people should be given tax raises, and that some people should even be given tax cuts.  To look at it in a very logical, and simplistic way though, it would be much better to raise taxes for everyone.  Although this will give people less money in their pockets, this would help the debt crisis, which could open up to new employment programs that are through the government (just as America did during The Great Depression), and on top of that would slowly bring our country back into the same financial situation it was, back when the debt clock was not on.  In other words, when our country would be in a surplus for only the 2nd time in it’s entire history.

What is Congress discussing behind those closed doors though?  When will they ever tell us?  It could be a few days, hell, it could be in 6 hours from now in the morning, or it could be in a few weeks.  In the end though, it is their decisions that will decide our future, and if it isn’t the right choice, then the Obama Review is given an F.  Even though this decision is only partially on him, he should be able to fight for what he thinks is right.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Matt Weldon.