Les
New Member
That does concern me and I believe that to be a real possibility. I try and hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
MESO-Rx
Anabolic Steroids
Obama - the failed president
- Thread starter tenpoundsleft
- Start date
Doesn't really mater. The US can't pay its debts and never intended to do so. Any government running its own central bank should be aware of this. Dumping Treasury notes is sort of the economic version of a suicide bomber. It pisses a lot of people off, but does little real harm unless you happen to be standing next to the bomber, or long treasury futures in your margin account.
I'm just hoping it doesn't go too far. Making America first is NOT compatible with putting America first.
I didn't know that our "government" ran it's own central bank.
We owe 20 trillion?....The whole country, private and federal, is only worth a little more than that!
I was talking about China.
DedLift
New Member
Yeah, its crazy that it's gotten that bad. Almost the entire amount can be split between Obama and Bush. Bill Clinton oversaw the largest economic expansion in our history and our national debt was in a surplus but he got a blowjob and that was enough to oust him. I bet we'd give a lot more than a bj to anyone that can fix our problems now.We owe 20 trillion?....The whole country, private and federal, is only worth a little more than that!
America needs Dave Ramsey elected secretary of all things debt related
Where cash is king?
Ramsey helped my ass get in financial shape!Where cash is king?
Alllllllmost debt free. Just a few more months
tenpoundsleft
Member
Clinton rode the CPU and Internet boom, enabled by technology and Reagan's results, no thanks to Clinton. Clinton was smart enough to work WITH the GOP Congress and take credit.
ronin17
New Member
Please, my 11yr niece is more knowledgeable about American politics and history than you are. Plus she hasnt been corrupted by narrow minded partisanship. Unlike ahem...you.
I was actually going to mention the tip and reagon years. Its a good example of when the republicans were still responsible and respectful. Now they are a fucking joke. And actually the federal government and our debt grew massively under reagen.
Nice try.
Get up earlier next time and do your homework. And whats this about reagen setting us up for the boom of the 90's.
That was clinton. Again, nice try. Try coming at me with facts. I know those are always laking in your arguments.
Please prove me wrong. I dare you.
Reagen didnt even know where he was for the last years he was in office.
Staw man at best. Actor. Its not hard @tenpoundsleft the information is out there. Reagen was a joke. And your latest savior is a joke. He is going to make a mockery of your vote.
The difference between you and I is I dont care if a person is a liberal or conservative. Democrat or republican.
All I care about is who has the best intrests of the middleclass in mind and who can protect us from our enemies.
Can you guess which one it is? Not easy but if you put your thinking cap on I bet you can get there.
You are a zealot. Your blinded by ideology. You cant think for yourself and it really shows with your threads and the links you post.
They are good for humor though so keep it up.
tenpoundsleft
Member
Total fail throughout, not even worth commenting on. My teenage daughter is better informed than you - and she can spell too.
You're not even able to stay on topic - this thread is about Obama you fool.
DedLift
New Member
Sometimes i ask myself..."What would Brian Boitano do?"
tenpoundsleft
Member
I had no idea who Boitano is, checked this :
What Would Brian Boitano Do? - Wikipedia
I'm usually more of a "what would Chuck Norris do?" person.
DedLift
New Member
Chuck Norris has already been to Mars, thats why there are no signs of life on it. I believe this to be true and am more than a little scared just mentioning his name
I thought you might be interested in this story from the New York Post.
It's time to face facts: Obama's presidency was a failure
It’s time to face facts: Obama’s presidency was a failure | New York Post
For more from the New York Post and to download our apps, visit NYPost.com.
Sent from my iPhone
It's time to face facts: Obama's presidency was a failure
It’s time to face facts: Obama’s presidency was a failure | New York Post
For more from the New York Post and to download our apps, visit NYPost.com.
Sent from my iPhone
tenpoundsleft
Member
Here's the article :
The closing arguments for the Obama years are arriving, and they aren’t helping the outgoing president. A case in point is a new book published this week, one that acknowledges “Obama’s supporters have experienced [his presidency] as a continuous disappointment.”
Those supporters, and others, must have noticed that “for most of Obama’s term, wage gains were largely confined to the rich.” Or that “The administration’s planning in Libya clearly failed” or “It is certain that the actual outcome [of Obama’s Syria policy] was disastrous.”
Even many of President Obama’s proudest achievements look about as enduring as April snow: “If there was a single aspect of Obama’s legacy most vulnerable to reversal, it was his achievements on climate change,” the book says, and “Obama’s regulatory offensive is, of course, vulnerable to reversal by Donald Trump or the Supreme Court, since it rested upon executive action.” The longest chapter is titled “The Inevitability of Disappointment.”
Yet the title of the book containing these quotations is “Audacity: How Barack Obama Defied His Critics and Created a Legacy That Will Prevail,” by the New York magazine columnist and lefty firebrand Jonathan Chait.
Sustained coherence seems to elude the author. On page 99 we hear about those “overblown or even false claims that the new law [ObamaCare] was raising premiums,” but three pages later we learn, “Big insurers like Aetna pulled out of the exchanges, reducing options, and insurers in most markets raised their premiums.” Oh. Republican opposition, which boils down to wariness of new spending while Obama is racking up more debt than the previous 43 presidents combined doesn’t earn a rational counter-argument.
No, the GOP simply means “rage.” “Republican terror,”
Chait writes, is “berserk” with a “fierce and even crazed tone” (this last describes Paul Ryan).
On page 31, Chait declares “the simplistic initial hope of Obama’s giddy supporters that the symbolism of a black president could help heal, if not eliminate, racial prejudice turned out to have a real basis in fact.” But 20 pages back he comes to the opposite conclusion: “racism continues to lurk deep in the American psyche,” “Americans had split once again into mutually uncomprehending racial camps,” “the continued existence of racism in American life has been confirmed by a library of social-science research.”
Only an Obama fanboy would argue, just as a fire is going out, that the whole forest is about to burn down.
Meanwhile, current polling on the matter is clear. American worries about race relations, which had been stable for nearly 20 years, increased markedly in Obama’s second term, reaching a new high last spring, while the president’s approval rating on race issues, which was very high when his first term began, has ranged from 48 percent to a low of 26 percent for the last seven years or so, according to Gallup.
Chait grouses that the 2009 stimulus was dismally small and admits that the Republican critique of it as funding “a wish list of long-standing Democratic policies” had “an element of truth.”
Yet he also celebrates it as saving us from depression. Really? The downturn actually ended in June 2009 as the first stimulus checks were being signed. Only an Obama fanboy would argue, just as a fire is going out, that the whole forest is about to burn down.
Moreover, deep recessions (such as the 1981-82 one) that cause people to cut way back are generally followed by booming rebounds. This one wasn’t. Far from turbo-charging the economy, the stimulus was such a dud that five years after the recovery began, 72 percent of Americans said in a poll that they thought we were still in a recession. “The stimulus ultimately failed to do what America expected it to do — bring about a strong, sustainable recovery,” wrote Michael Grabell of ProPublica.
That’s hard to dispute given the sluggishness of the recovery — economic growth has been by far the weakest of any post-recession period since WWII. But Chait has zilch to say about that. Nor does Chait mention that Obama is the first president since Herbert Hoover to fail to preside over a single year of 3 percent growth. But hey, Obama fans, stay in your bubble. It’s cozy there.
Sealing himself off certainly didn’t work for the Bubble President, though. President Obama entered office thinking: “They love me! So they’ll love everything I do!” No. He had no backup plan for what to do if Congress became less than generous with the rubber stamp. Virtually every president has to negotiate with Capitol Hill — Reagan faced hostile Democrats in the House for his entire presidency — but Obama thought horse-trading was beneath him.
So he contented himself giving speeches and signing executive orders that Donald Trump is about to feed into the shredder. It looks like Obama’s chapter in the history books is going to be much like his résumé when he was elected president: thin.
tenpoundsleft
Member
From today's Washington Times
Obama scores poorly in working with Congress on legislation
I have italicized the humorously apologetic portion about "his struggles to find ways to work with a Congress that ranged from lukewarm to openly hostile toward him" - when the truth is that Obama has never even tried to work with Congress, not even with his own party.
And Reagan had an even more hostile environment to deal with (both sides of Congress against him + the rabidly virulent throng of media haters pounding on him daily) yet he got things done the Constitutional way, not via Executive pen strokes.
What he did do was fuck up the healthcare sector, blow $9 Trillion on nothing tangible, and screw up the financial services industry further.
Here's a portion that deserves more attention:
*** "Stymied in Congress, Mr. Obama took steps on his own instead."
Translation for the liberals on Meso:
*** "When the American people decided they didn't like Obama's direction, and instead elected more Republicans, Obama went rogue and started to aggressively abuse Executive Orders to get his will through at any price."
January 20 can't come soon enough...
*****
Obama scores the worst legislative record in history
Signed fewer bills into law than one-term Carter
Congress spent less time in session, handled less business on the chamber floors and generally sputtered for much of President Obama’s tenure.
The Washington Times - Updated: 12:47 p.m. on Wednesday, January 18, 2017
President Obama oversaw the deepest legislative malaise in modern political history, according to the Washington Times Legislative Index, which captures his struggles to find ways to work with a Congress that ranged from lukewarm to openly hostile toward him.
Over the course of his eight years, he has signed just 1,227 bills into law — less, even, than one-term Presidents Carter and George H.W. Bush. Digging deeper into the numbers, Congress spent less time in session, handled fewer business on the chamber floors and generally sputtered for much of Mr. Obama’s tenure, according to The Times’ index.
Blame for the poor showing falls across Washington. Some analysts say a Congress with four years of divided control hamstrung Mr. Obama, while others say the president failed to find ways to work with the legislature that voters gave him — particularly after the 2010 elections.
“The president was never good at reaching across the aisle. So when the composition of Congress changed relative to what it was in his first two years, he wasn’t able to accommodate that very well,” said Andrew Busch, a presidential scholar at Claremont McKenna College in California. “He never accustomed himself to operating in a system where he was not the sole player.”
It’s all the more stunning for Mr. Obama having emerged from the legislature himself, having served first in the Illinois Statehouse and then in the U.S. Senate, where he spent two years in a Republican-controlled Congress and two years in a Democrat-run Congress.
He was the first president since John F. Kennedy to make the leap directly from Capitol Hill to the White House, but he took a mostly hands-off approach, leaving his former colleagues on their own to hash out the details of bills.
“Could he have potentially reached out more? I think that’s a fair criticism,” said Joshua C. Huder, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute.
But he said lawmakers on Capitol Hill were putting up more roadblocks than they did to previous presidents — particularly when power was split in the House and Senate in the 112th and 113th congresses.
“You have to look at Congress. They didn’t give him anything, essentially,” Mr. Huder said. “Most of this lays on Congress for those four years it was divided between Republicans and Democrats.”
The White House didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment, but Mr. Obama, in his farewell speech, ticked off a list of accomplishments: working on the economy, bolstering the auto industry, opening diplomatic relations with Cuba, striking a nuclear deal with Iran, ordering the assault that killed Osama bin Laden, arguing for same-sex marriage in the courts and enacting Obamacare. Of those, only health care and the economy required work with Congress.
Mr. Obama’s best years were in 2009 and 2010, when his fellow Democrats held massive majorities in both the House and Senate. He achieved legacy-defining laws including Obamacare, the 2009 stimulus and a new set of rules for Wall Street in the Dodd-Frank legislation.
But even accounting for those big bills, the 111th Congress was still far from active by standards of the post-World War II era. The 383 bills signed into law made it the sixth least productive Congress on record. Even measured by the broader Times Legislative Index, it was middle of the pack.
The 2010 elections put Republicans in control of the House but left Democrats with a majority in the Senate, sending legislative activity into a tailspin for the next four years.
The 112th and 113th congresses were the worst on record, according to the The Times’ index, which checks a broad set of legislative measures, including amount of time spent in session, number of bills considered by each chamber, number of votes taken and number of bicameral conference reports approved. The index is based on data from the Congressional Record, which tracks back to 1947 and spans 35 Congresses.
Even in 2015, when Republicans gained control of the Senate and kept control of the House, things were still stagnant, notching the third-worst Congress in The Times’ Index.
Democrats say that’s evidence that the problem lay with a Republican Party determined to deny Mr. Obama any major accomplishments.
By comparison, they pointed to the final two years under President George W. Bush, when Democrats controlled Congress and found ways to work on a number of big issues. Indeed, the 110th Congress placed in the top third in The Times index, passing a major energy bill, a first stab at an economic stimulus, a minimum wage increase and a new GI bill to send veterans from the war on terrorism back to school.
Mr. Obama never found that common ground with congressional Republicans, however, leaving a striking list of unaccomplished goals: major tax reform, a legacy-building Pacific trade deal, a long-sought immigration overhaul and climate change legislation.
Despite his most fervent pleas, Mr. Obama failed to make any headway on gun control, Mr. Huder said.
“That’s something that he really, really pushed. He put in a lot of effort,” he said.
Stymied in Congress, Mr. Obama took steps on his own instead.
On gun control, he expanded the universe of people who faced background checks on gun purchases. On global warming, he imposed a series of regulations meant to phase out much of the fossil-fuel-based economy. On immigration, he announced two deportation amnesties, a 2012 policy aimed at protecting hundreds of thousands of so-called Dreamers and a 2014 policy aimed at as many as 4 million illegal immigrant parents.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest, in his final daily briefing, blamed Republicans for forcing Mr. Obama to act unilaterally.
“We ran into a brick wall of opposition when it comes to Republicans when they took power in 2011,” he said. “And so we didn’t pass as much legislatively as we would have liked to have done, but the president did use his executive authority to advance our country’s interests and to advance the agenda that he was seeking to implement.”
*****
Obama scores poorly in working with Congress on legislation
I have italicized the humorously apologetic portion about "his struggles to find ways to work with a Congress that ranged from lukewarm to openly hostile toward him" - when the truth is that Obama has never even tried to work with Congress, not even with his own party.
And Reagan had an even more hostile environment to deal with (both sides of Congress against him + the rabidly virulent throng of media haters pounding on him daily) yet he got things done the Constitutional way, not via Executive pen strokes.
What he did do was fuck up the healthcare sector, blow $9 Trillion on nothing tangible, and screw up the financial services industry further.
Here's a portion that deserves more attention:
*** "Stymied in Congress, Mr. Obama took steps on his own instead."
Translation for the liberals on Meso:
*** "When the American people decided they didn't like Obama's direction, and instead elected more Republicans, Obama went rogue and started to aggressively abuse Executive Orders to get his will through at any price."
January 20 can't come soon enough...
*****
Obama scores the worst legislative record in history
Signed fewer bills into law than one-term Carter
Congress spent less time in session, handled less business on the chamber floors and generally sputtered for much of President Obama’s tenure.
The Washington Times - Updated: 12:47 p.m. on Wednesday, January 18, 2017
President Obama oversaw the deepest legislative malaise in modern political history, according to the Washington Times Legislative Index, which captures his struggles to find ways to work with a Congress that ranged from lukewarm to openly hostile toward him.
Over the course of his eight years, he has signed just 1,227 bills into law — less, even, than one-term Presidents Carter and George H.W. Bush. Digging deeper into the numbers, Congress spent less time in session, handled fewer business on the chamber floors and generally sputtered for much of Mr. Obama’s tenure, according to The Times’ index.
Blame for the poor showing falls across Washington. Some analysts say a Congress with four years of divided control hamstrung Mr. Obama, while others say the president failed to find ways to work with the legislature that voters gave him — particularly after the 2010 elections.
“The president was never good at reaching across the aisle. So when the composition of Congress changed relative to what it was in his first two years, he wasn’t able to accommodate that very well,” said Andrew Busch, a presidential scholar at Claremont McKenna College in California. “He never accustomed himself to operating in a system where he was not the sole player.”
It’s all the more stunning for Mr. Obama having emerged from the legislature himself, having served first in the Illinois Statehouse and then in the U.S. Senate, where he spent two years in a Republican-controlled Congress and two years in a Democrat-run Congress.
He was the first president since John F. Kennedy to make the leap directly from Capitol Hill to the White House, but he took a mostly hands-off approach, leaving his former colleagues on their own to hash out the details of bills.
“Could he have potentially reached out more? I think that’s a fair criticism,” said Joshua C. Huder, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute.
But he said lawmakers on Capitol Hill were putting up more roadblocks than they did to previous presidents — particularly when power was split in the House and Senate in the 112th and 113th congresses.
“You have to look at Congress. They didn’t give him anything, essentially,” Mr. Huder said. “Most of this lays on Congress for those four years it was divided between Republicans and Democrats.”
The White House didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment, but Mr. Obama, in his farewell speech, ticked off a list of accomplishments: working on the economy, bolstering the auto industry, opening diplomatic relations with Cuba, striking a nuclear deal with Iran, ordering the assault that killed Osama bin Laden, arguing for same-sex marriage in the courts and enacting Obamacare. Of those, only health care and the economy required work with Congress.
Mr. Obama’s best years were in 2009 and 2010, when his fellow Democrats held massive majorities in both the House and Senate. He achieved legacy-defining laws including Obamacare, the 2009 stimulus and a new set of rules for Wall Street in the Dodd-Frank legislation.
But even accounting for those big bills, the 111th Congress was still far from active by standards of the post-World War II era. The 383 bills signed into law made it the sixth least productive Congress on record. Even measured by the broader Times Legislative Index, it was middle of the pack.
The 2010 elections put Republicans in control of the House but left Democrats with a majority in the Senate, sending legislative activity into a tailspin for the next four years.
The 112th and 113th congresses were the worst on record, according to the The Times’ index, which checks a broad set of legislative measures, including amount of time spent in session, number of bills considered by each chamber, number of votes taken and number of bicameral conference reports approved. The index is based on data from the Congressional Record, which tracks back to 1947 and spans 35 Congresses.
Even in 2015, when Republicans gained control of the Senate and kept control of the House, things were still stagnant, notching the third-worst Congress in The Times’ Index.
Democrats say that’s evidence that the problem lay with a Republican Party determined to deny Mr. Obama any major accomplishments.
By comparison, they pointed to the final two years under President George W. Bush, when Democrats controlled Congress and found ways to work on a number of big issues. Indeed, the 110th Congress placed in the top third in The Times index, passing a major energy bill, a first stab at an economic stimulus, a minimum wage increase and a new GI bill to send veterans from the war on terrorism back to school.
Mr. Obama never found that common ground with congressional Republicans, however, leaving a striking list of unaccomplished goals: major tax reform, a legacy-building Pacific trade deal, a long-sought immigration overhaul and climate change legislation.
Despite his most fervent pleas, Mr. Obama failed to make any headway on gun control, Mr. Huder said.
“That’s something that he really, really pushed. He put in a lot of effort,” he said.
Stymied in Congress, Mr. Obama took steps on his own instead.
On gun control, he expanded the universe of people who faced background checks on gun purchases. On global warming, he imposed a series of regulations meant to phase out much of the fossil-fuel-based economy. On immigration, he announced two deportation amnesties, a 2012 policy aimed at protecting hundreds of thousands of so-called Dreamers and a 2014 policy aimed at as many as 4 million illegal immigrant parents.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest, in his final daily briefing, blamed Republicans for forcing Mr. Obama to act unilaterally.
“We ran into a brick wall of opposition when it comes to Republicans when they took power in 2011,” he said. “And so we didn’t pass as much legislatively as we would have liked to have done, but the president did use his executive authority to advance our country’s interests and to advance the agenda that he was seeking to implement.”
*****
Last edited:
So, let me get this straight... Obama signed fewer bills than any other president, passed one of the most catastrophic bills ever enacted (obamacare) and openly defied our Constitution by bypassing Congress for 8 years and yet he's the greatest president there ever was? Well, I mean, he was dubbed the greatest president ever since just a few months after he was sworn in to office. That, plus the Nobel Peace prize before he did anything. Amazing.From today's Washington Times
Obama scores poorly in working with Congress on legislation
I have italicized the humorously apologetic portion about "his struggles to find ways to work with a Congress that ranged from lukewarm to openly hostile toward him" - when the truth is that Obama has never even tried to work with Congress, not even with his own party.
And Reagan had an even more hostile environment to deal with (both sides of Congress against him + the rabidly virulent throng of media haters pounding on him daily) yet he got things done the Constitutional way, not via Executive pen strokes.
What he did do was fuck up the healthcare sector, blow $9 Trillion on nothing tangible, and screw up the financial services industry further.
Here's a portion that deserves more attention:
*** "Stymied in Congress, Mr. Obama took steps on his own instead."
Translation for the liberals on Meso:
*** "When the American people decided they didn't like Obama's direction, and instead elected more Republicans, Obama went rogue and started to aggressively abuse Executive Orders to get his will through at any price."
January 20 can't come soon enough...
*****
Obama scores the worst legislative record in history
Signed fewer bills into law than one-term Carter
Congress spent less time in session, handled less business on the chamber floors and generally sputtered for much of President Obama’s tenure.
The Washington Times - Updated: 12:47 p.m. on Wednesday, January 18, 2017
President Obama oversaw the deepest legislative malaise in modern political history, according to the Washington Times Legislative Index, which captures his struggles to find ways to work with a Congress that ranged from lukewarm to openly hostile toward him.
Over the course of his eight years, he has signed just 1,227 bills into law — less, even, than one-term Presidents Carter and George H.W. Bush. Digging deeper into the numbers, Congress spent less time in session, handled fewer business on the chamber floors and generally sputtered for much of Mr. Obama’s tenure, according to The Times’ index.
Blame for the poor showing falls across Washington. Some analysts say a Congress with four years of divided control hamstrung Mr. Obama, while others say the president failed to find ways to work with the legislature that voters gave him — particularly after the 2010 elections.
“The president was never good at reaching across the aisle. So when the composition of Congress changed relative to what it was in his first two years, he wasn’t able to accommodate that very well,” said Andrew Busch, a presidential scholar at Claremont McKenna College in California. “He never accustomed himself to operating in a system where he was not the sole player.”
It’s all the more stunning for Mr. Obama having emerged from the legislature himself, having served first in the Illinois Statehouse and then in the U.S. Senate, where he spent two years in a Republican-controlled Congress and two years in a Democrat-run Congress.
He was the first president since John F. Kennedy to make the leap directly from Capitol Hill to the White House, but he took a mostly hands-off approach, leaving his former colleagues on their own to hash out the details of bills.
“Could he have potentially reached out more? I think that’s a fair criticism,” said Joshua C. Huder, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute.
But he said lawmakers on Capitol Hill were putting up more roadblocks than they did to previous presidents — particularly when power was split in the House and Senate in the 112th and 113th congresses.
“You have to look at Congress. They didn’t give him anything, essentially,” Mr. Huder said. “Most of this lays on Congress for those four years it was divided between Republicans and Democrats.”
The White House didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment, but Mr. Obama, in his farewell speech, ticked off a list of accomplishments: working on the economy, bolstering the auto industry, opening diplomatic relations with Cuba, striking a nuclear deal with Iran, ordering the assault that killed Osama bin Laden, arguing for same-sex marriage in the courts and enacting Obamacare. Of those, only health care and the economy required work with Congress.
Mr. Obama’s best years were in 2009 and 2010, when his fellow Democrats held massive majorities in both the House and Senate. He achieved legacy-defining laws including Obamacare, the 2009 stimulus and a new set of rules for Wall Street in the Dodd-Frank legislation.
But even accounting for those big bills, the 111th Congress was still far from active by standards of the post-World War II era. The 383 bills signed into law made it the sixth least productive Congress on record. Even measured by the broader Times Legislative Index, it was middle of the pack.
The 2010 elections put Republicans in control of the House but left Democrats with a majority in the Senate, sending legislative activity into a tailspin for the next four years.
The 112th and 113th congresses were the worst on record, according to the The Times’ index, which checks a broad set of legislative measures, including amount of time spent in session, number of bills considered by each chamber, number of votes taken and number of bicameral conference reports approved. The index is based on data from the Congressional Record, which tracks back to 1947 and spans 35 Congresses.
Even in 2015, when Republicans gained control of the Senate and kept control of the House, things were still stagnant, notching the third-worst Congress in The Times’ Index.
Democrats say that’s evidence that the problem lay with a Republican Party determined to deny Mr. Obama any major accomplishments.
By comparison, they pointed to the final two years under President George W. Bush, when Democrats controlled Congress and found ways to work on a number of big issues. Indeed, the 110th Congress placed in the top third in The Times index, passing a major energy bill, a first stab at an economic stimulus, a minimum wage increase and a new GI bill to send veterans from the war on terrorism back to school.
Mr. Obama never found that common ground with congressional Republicans, however, leaving a striking list of unaccomplished goals: major tax reform, a legacy-building Pacific trade deal, a long-sought immigration overhaul and climate change legislation.
Despite his most fervent pleas, Mr. Obama failed to make any headway on gun control, Mr. Huder said.
“That’s something that he really, really pushed. He put in a lot of effort,” he said.
Stymied in Congress, Mr. Obama took steps on his own instead.
On gun control, he expanded the universe of people who faced background checks on gun purchases. On global warming, he imposed a series of regulations meant to phase out much of the fossil-fuel-based economy. On immigration, he announced two deportation amnesties, a 2012 policy aimed at protecting hundreds of thousands of so-called Dreamers and a 2014 policy aimed at as many as 4 million illegal immigrant parents.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest, in his final daily briefing, blamed Republicans for forcing Mr. Obama to act unilaterally.
“We ran into a brick wall of opposition when it comes to Republicans when they took power in 2011,” he said. “And so we didn’t pass as much legislatively as we would have liked to have done, but the president did use his executive authority to advance our country’s interests and to advance the agenda that he was seeking to implement.”
*****
Similar threads
