Obama-Instigated Change
Republicans are throwing around negative inuendos, smears and outright lies about Obama - his citizenship, his religion, his fitness, his loyalty, his policies..... But I am most disgusted with the way Republicans malign Obama's solid achievements with regard to the economy. Two things they scream most about are the bailouts and The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. They fail to say that the big financial bailout was the work of the Bush Administration. And they deliberately confuse the Recovery Act, with which Obama has instigated an era of economic change.
Everybody understands the Recovery Act as a jobs bill and it did produce 3 million jobs. But it is a lot more than a jobs bill. Obama and his advisors studied the economy and discovered that many of the lost jobs will not come back when the economy gets out of the ditch. So they worked hard to develop a plan to improve the economic structure, so that there would be more and better jobs in the future.
Many brilliant ideas are in the Recovery Act. Time Magazine presents a tremendous list. You must read the whole thing to get to understand the genius of this legislation. Here is an excerpt:
For starters, the Recovery Act is the most ambitious energy legislation in history, converting the Energy Department into the world's largest venture-capital fund. It's pouring $90 billion into clean energy, including unprecedented investments in a smart grid; energy efficiency; electric cars; renewable power from the sun, wind and earth; cleaner coal; advanced biofuels; and factories to manufacture green stuff in the U.S. The act will also triple the number of smart electric meters in our homes, quadruple the number of hybrids in the federal auto fleet and finance far-out energy research through a new government incubator modeled after the Pentagon agency that fathered the Internet. (See TIME's special report "After One Year, A Stimulus Report Card.")
..............The stimulus is also stocked with nonenergy game changers, like a tenfold increase in funding to expand access to broadband and an effort to sequence more than 2,300 complete human genomes — when only 34 were sequenced with all previous aid. There's $8 billion for a high-speed passenger rail network, the boldest federal transportation initiative since the interstate highways. There's $4.35 billion in Race to the Top grants to promote accountability in public schools, perhaps the most significant federal education initiative ever — it's already prompted 35 states and the District of Columbia to adopt reforms to qualify for the cash. There's $20 billion to move health records into the digital age, which should reduce redundant tests, dangerous drug interactions and errors caused by doctors with chicken-scratch handwriting. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius calls that initiative the foundation for Obama's health care reform and "maybe the single biggest component in improving quality and lowering costs."
Candidate Obama promised change and here is the change.
True, we are still in a grave depression. However, it takes time to extricate ourselves from a cataclysmic depression that has been brought about by decades of deregulation.
President Obama has achieved more in less than 2 years than had been achieved by most presidents during their time in office. Among the Big achievements are universal health care, financial reform and an economy-changing Stimulus. This is what is meant by Obama-instigated change.
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