150 Reasons Why Barack Obama Is the Worst President in History (2 page)

Right-to-work laws make it illegal for a company to force union membership and the payment of union dues as a condition for employment. Any worker can belong to any union he likes, but he cannot be required to belong to a union in order to be employed at any firm. Obama opposed this basic protection of workers, dubbing them “right to work for less” laws.
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Despite his rhetoric in support of forced unionization, states with right-to-work laws have created four times as many jobs as forced-unionization states.
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From 2009-2012, right-to-work states accounted for 72 percent of the new jobs created, even though they only account for less than 40 percent of the population.
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Given Obama’s poor economic record, it’s quite ironic that policies he
opposes
have proven to be better at job creation than the ones he supports. If putting people to work transcended politics for Obama, he’d support right-to-work laws because they actually
encourage
job growth.

10.
Credit Rating Downgrade

In modern history, a lot of nations have had their credit ratings downgraded; nations like Argentina and Zimbabwe, third-rate, banana republics of no international standing. The United States, though, has always stood financially sound. But, on August 5, 2011, Standard & Poor downgraded US credit rating from AAA to AA+. What did this mean? It meant that the financial world was starting to doubt that the United States, under Obama, could generate enough money long-term to pay down the massive and rapidly rising US debt. When you’re running more than $1 trillion in annual deficits, then you’d better get a lot of economic growth to repay the money you borrowed. But, we didn’t get the economic growth that was promised, and financial markets were taking a long, hard look at the American ability to repay loans. And it is getting worse—economic growth since August of 2011 has been steadily declining while the amount of money we’re borrowing hasn’t gone down. Sadly, reports indicate that our credit rating could be downgraded again in 2013.
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11.
The Food Stamp President

By Election Day 2012, the number of Americans on enrolled in food stamps, called the
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP),
rose to the record-high number of 46.7 million people.
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While most Americans share a desire to help those who are in poverty, the fact remains that being a government dependent is a demoralizing condition. Quite often, people who become dependent upon government for a long time lose the incentive to work and improve their own lives.

For each person who has managed to get a job in the Obama Economy, 75 have gone on food stamps.
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The number of food stamp recipients grew roughly 11,113 per day during Obama’s first term.
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Of course, since those who are dependent on government handouts tend to support Democrats, Obama may actually consider this a good thing. Further aggravating the problem is the cost of program. By November 2012, participation in the food stamp program increased 49.3 percent, but the cost increased over 100 percent, now costing taxpayers over $75 billion annually.
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How did this happen? We need to look no further than Obama’s 2009 “Stimulus,” which increased the benefits of the program and relaxed eligibility. The “Stimulus,” which was supposed to encourage economic growth, actually encouraged government dependency.

12.
Food Stamp Fraud Doubling in One Term

There was another side effect of changes made to the food stamp program in Obama’s stimulus: a massive increase in food stamp fraud.

Compared to other federal programs, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program has one of the lowest rates of fraud, but with the program now running at a $75 billion annual cost, even a small amount of fraud translates to millions of dollars.
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The cost of food stamp fraud more than doubled during Obama’s first term, costing taxpayers $750 million in 2012─despite the fact the Obama Administration planned to crack down on food stamp fraud back in 2011.
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13.
The Disability President

Unemployment benefits only last for a finite period of time, but long-term unemployment has become the new normal under Obama. Given this, it’s hardly surprising that Americans unable to find work are finding alternatives to unemployment checks to sustain them. One such alternative appears to be Social Security Disability.

Under Obama, Social Security Disability claims are rising at a 4.5 percent annual rate, even though the incidences of work-place injuries have been declining for many years now.
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As of September 2012, there were nearly 8.8 million Americans receiving Social Security Disability payments, an increase of about 16 percent since Obama took office.
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If only the number of jobs or the income of American workers had risen that much!

Because dependent people are more easily controlled, the government is making it easier for people to become dependent. One way the government is doing this is by no longer carefully checking those who are claiming Social Security Disability. According to a staff report from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, a large percentage of disability claims are not properly reviewed. Without proper reviews, it is hard to know how many people are getting Social Security Disability when not eligible for it.
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14.
America Losing its Global Competitiveness

If we in the United States want our children to have a good life then we have to compete effectively with foreign nations. Global trade is so interconnected these days that we must measure up to the effort being made by poor, hungry, ambitious people in developing nations striving to become prosperous. Unfortunately, under President Obama, America has been losing its competitive edge in the world. On Obama’s watch, we’ve already seen China overtake the United States in manufacturing competitiveness, and reports indicate that in 2013 India and Brazil will also surpass us in this key economic measure.
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America rose to wealth and global power based on our superior ability to make things. The “Greatest Generation” was able to win World War II largely because Americans manufactured more war materials than the Germans and Japanese
combined
. That edge is now gone and continues to get worse.

15.
Decline of Economic Freedom

In order for there to be economic growth, there has to be economic freedom. Just look at the nations that have none—in the communist dictatorship of North Korea, the people reportedly eat tree bark to survive.
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Zimbabwe, which used to be self-sufficient in food, has suffered a 70% percent reduction in food production since dictator Robert Mugabe gained power.
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Venezuela, until recently run by the late dictator Hugo Chavez, sits on an ocean of oil , and is also blessed with other, abundant natural resources but now suffers from food and power shortages.
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The common denominator in these examples is a governments which has taken control over the economy. In every case this is tried, economic disaster results.

Economic freedom allows people to start and expand business as they see fit. It allows people to take risks and earn rewards. People decide for themselves what is best for themselves. Freedom and ingenuity create more success than top-down attempts to increase national wealth.

According to the latest 2012 Economic Freedom of the World report by economists James Gwartney, Robert Lawson, and Joshua Hall, the United States “was generally rated the third freest economy in the world” from 1980 to 2000, but has declined ever since.
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Benjamin Powell, Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute and Associate Professor of Economics at Suffolk University, explained what happened:

The declines in freedom have occurred because the federal government has grown larger and more intrusive. It has been a non-partisan affair. Approximately two thirds of the decline in economic freedom occurred during Bush’s presidency. But pace of decline doubled during the first two years of Obama’s presidency. In fact, the new index is based off of data from 2010. If the rate of decline has remained unchanged over the last two years the United States has already fallen to 40th and ranks behind places like Romania, Sweden, and Panama. Unfortunately the data needed to investigate that is not available yet.
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Obama’s promise of four more years of more of the same bodes ill for any revival of American economic freedom and prosperity.

16.
The Largest Tax Increase on The Middle Class in History

Obamacare, aside from being a government takeover of health care, is also the largest tax increase on the middle class in history. When the Supreme Court upheld the law by declaring that the individual mandate was constitutional only as a tax, the
Wall Street Journal
explained the implications of the decision:

It is now undeniable that Mr. Obama has imposed the largest tax increase in history on the middle class. Individuals who don’t buy insurance will have to pay several hundred dollars, depending on income. The Congressional Budget Office says that 76% of those who pay the mandate tax will make less than 500% of the federal poverty level, estimated to be $24,000 for a family of four in 2016. That means 76% of the payers will earn less than $120,000 a year.

So much for Mr. Obama’s promise not to raise taxes on anyone earning less than $200,000. And this initial mandate tax will only be a teaser rate when it becomes clear it isn’t nearly enough either to finance the bill or drive individuals to buy insurance. Millions will wait to buy insurance until they need expensive treatment, knowing they can always buy it when they show up at the hospital.
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Whether you want to call it a tax or a mandate, the middle class will pay
more
because of Obama’s policies.

Despite this crippling tax increase, Obama continued to insist through the 2012 campaign that he hadn’t raised taxes. During a
60 Minutes
interview Obama not only insisted he hadn’t raised taxes, but he had the nerve to claim he had
cut
taxes.
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But the facts are otherwise: Obamacare has 18 new tax hikes, with $36.3 billion in taxes hitting the American people in 2013, alone.
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17.
Keeping Gas Prices High

Americans have, as Vice-President Joe Biden said, been buried, since Obama became president.
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Those who still have jobs are making less, and are having to pay more for pretty much everything largely due to high gas prices, which Obama has done little to alleviate.
Obama has claimed that the price of gas depends on a lot of factors that are beyond his control. In fact, his actions have helped bring gas prices up even faster.
If President Obama wanted to lower gas prices, but wasn’t sure how, he could have asked his predecessor for some advice. In the summer of 2008, the national average price of gas was over $4.00 a gallon, but six months later, when Obama took office, the national average had plummeted to under $2.00 a gallon.
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It’s no coincidence that the sharp decline in gas prices began almost immediately after President Bush lifted the offshore drilling ban in mid-July. The price per gallon of gas was cut in half before we could even start drilling.

But what did Obama do? The exact opposite of what Bush did. Using the BP Oil Spill as political cover, Obama banned offshore drilling in Atlantic waters for at least seven years. And gas prices, which were already creeping back up, spiked.
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Clearly, he has the power to impact prices.

Presidents can’t control gas prices, but they certainly can influence them with their policy decisions. Obama, like his predecessor, successfully influenced gas prices, but only one managed to help average Americans with his actions… and it wasn’t Obama.

18.
Falsely Claiming the Mantle of Tax-Cutter

According to Barack Obama, his stimulus bill cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans. It was a lie oft repeated, and rarely challenged by the media. Fact-checking websites like PolitiFact even claimed that Obama was telling the truth.
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However, veteran journalist and blogger Robert Stacy McCain explains why the stimulus bill was anything but a tax cut:

What was included in the February 2009 stimulus package was not a “tax cut.” No one’s tax rates were reduced. Instead, there was a temporary two-year tax credit that reduced payroll withholding by — brace yourself — a whopping $8 a week.
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But this wasn’t the only act Obama claimed was a genuine tax cut. Towards the end of 2010, Obama proposed a one-year tax cut to the Social Security payroll tax.
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What this amounted to was taking the money which was supposed to be saved for our retirement in exchange bolstering his claim that he’s a tax-cutter. All while contributing to the insolvency of Social Security.