Originally posted by psmith81992
You said he accomplished ALL the big policies.
Yes. The stimulus, Obamacare, Iran deal, gay marriage.
That's not everything he wanted, but that's the big ones.
He wanted more stimulus, more small things, etc., but it's hard to deny that, though it took wrangling, he got those big things done. I guess the biggest thing he failed at is... working to reduce bipartisanship, though he certainly tried pretty hard! Hand has the marks from being slapped away, to be sure. Still, yea, I guess that one is not in the win category out of big things.
I'd like to see this.
Ack, typo on my part, I meant uninsured rate... but that said, yes, the unemployment rate also continues to go down. I don't think it's necessarily Obamacare related, but hey, it certainly isn't hurting, it's quite possibly a positive factor.
(Article with numbers "in the year and a half since Obamacare went fully into effect, the U.S. economy has added an average of 237,000 private-sector jobs per month."😉
This isn't a big thing considering the backlash he's getting and the majority of Americans being against it.
Didn't we get into a discussion about how the objections are largely on party lines....?
The GOP tries to rally the country against everything he does. They did so against the successful stimulus, they did so against his support for gay marriage.
A backlash does not equal a good deal. Experts in the intelligence and nuclear communites, and most of the rest of the world is for it.
Iranian hardliners who are rapidly anti-American hate it.
Now, I know you're big in with those hardliners, but I don't think they're always right.
It wasn't a terrible deal but it wasn't a good one either. Simply saying he pulled it off when Bush didn't doesn't make it a big deal.
The thing is, Bush would've been right in doing it too. It is a good deal. It would've been good under Bush, it is good under Obama.
It has multi-layed measures that make getting a bomb harder, from major economic repercussions for doing so, to reducing physical capabilities, to finally and least important, inspectors, which also has the double-bonus of increasing the amount of information are intelligence community has so they can watch more intensely and accurately. It does so in exchange for sanctions that aren't going to last indefinitely even without a deal (since they rely on international support including from countries that are grumpy with us), and those sanctions couldn't have prevented a bomb anyway.
Just because you don't like Obama does not make this a bad deal. The deal was, in fact, designed so that even if they break it we're better off for having done so.
Then he's also responsible for the largest national debt in world history, if we're giving credit and blame for anything that happened on his watch.
In dollar terms, sure. However, in percentage of GDP terms, it's not a US record nor is it near the top for first world countries that have stable economics that are not in danger from debt- That'd be Japan.
You see, the sensible response to an economic crash is spending out of it, and then once you're healthy your GDP growth increases greater than the debt and your ability to pay- and before you respond to that, let me remind you that is *exactly* how we dealt with the great depression/world war 2 debt, very successfully, and that was higher in percent-of-GDP terms, and attempts to not-spend your way out of debt and instead cut it with austerity ironically cut into the economy, which lowers revenue, which in turn rising debt.
This is what happened to several other countries during the recession, and in the past with Japan's "Lost Decade," which finally ended when Japan spent their way out of it. Now they have a debt that percent-of-GDP-wise exceeding ours by a fair amount, but a healthy economy again.
Another fun factoid is the one time the US actually got rid of our debt entirely, it caused a significant economic crash because our debt is a commodity that's bought and sold and is thus a very stabilizing influence on the market, debt is ironically valuable. And, with interest rates as they are, currently it basically amounts to 'other people paying us to hold their money.' Which is not a phrase one often associates with 'too much.'
Also, the debt went up way high under his predecessor who left him with lingering costs, and without the excuse of world wide economic crash.
Furthermore, one of Donald Trump's good position is he isn't leaping to cut social security and medicare- because he isn't afraid of debt.
Debt is an area I have a high degree of familiarity in.
And there is a large camp of economists that believe we should have let the economy crash to reduce the damage for the next generation (Paul, Schiff, etc). Not saying I support or oppose it but it's an interesting theory to let everything fail, deal with the huge disaster, and rebuild anew.
These people are frankly idiots, and they are also a small camp of the actual economics (they're a bigger camp of 'non-economists who have strong ideological opinions of the economy'😉. The economists of both parties came in strong support of both bailouts and stimulus, even if that, especially the latter part, likes to get forgotten by some people nowadays.
20%+ unemployment rates, collapsed financial institutions (remember, during the crash banks were taking down banks in a chain reaction of one going under crashing assets controlled by others- The India railway was affected because the wUS's lending capacity took such a large blow. Businesses that use short-term loans took major hits- and would've fallen if the banks didn't start loaning again, etc.), and that sort of thing do not 'lessen damage to the next generation.'
Doing nothing was part of the cause of the great depression. It sucked. Doing something got us recovery in similar times to the much smaller 80s recession.
Hey, another praise Trump moment: I think there's an almost 0% chance Trump would agree with the assessment of that pro-crash group (unless I misjudged him), and I would applaud at the insults he'd give them if a situation like that came up during a hypothetical Trump presidency.