Americans Deserve Leadership
November 1, 2012
“Never before have a President and a Senate majority party done so little when our challenges have been so great.”
– Senate Republican Leader McConnell
President Obama and Senate Democrats have failed to lead on the most vital issues of our time: jobs, the economy, the debt, energy, and national security. Americans are not better off than they were four years ago. The American people deserve real leadership.
Jobs and the Economy
President Obama has presided over the worst recovery in history. Families’ incomes have fallen $4,000 in the past four years. Gross domestic product grew by just 6.7 percent in the first three years after the recession ended in 2009. To put that in context, since World War II America has had two recoveries from recession that have been dramatically different.
- The Reagan recovery from 1982 to 1985 had three-year growth of more than 17 percent.
- The Truman recovery from 1949 to 1952 saw three-year growth of more than 25 percent.
Every other recovery has outpaced the Obama recovery by at least 1.7 percentage points.
The President promised the passage of his 2009 stimulus law would bring America to full employment by now. The difference between where unemployment is today and the President’s promise is nine million American jobs.
The “real” U-6 unemployment rate is currently 14.7 percent -- 23.2 million Americans. This is the total of unemployed and underemployed Americans.
Jobs are hard to come by in this economy. There are five million Americans who have been searching for work for more than half a year. The average number of weeks a worker is unemployed is 10 months. And 47 million Americans are now relying on food stamps – that’s 15 million more than when President Obama took office. The U.S. economy is not fixed. America needs 12 million new jobs for a real recovery.
Debt
Over three and a half years have passed since Senate Democrats last passed a budget. In that time, about $5 trillion has been added to the nation’s debt. Each American’s share of the debt is now $52,000.
In each of the last four years, President Obama has presided over deficits of more than a trillion dollars. The country’s finances are out of balance, yet Senate Democrats continue to oppose a balanced budget amendment. Under the President, our debt has gone from $10 trillion in 2008 to $16 trillion in 2012, on its way to $25 trillion in another 10 years.
Fiscal Cliff
President Obama has failed to lead on addressing the $600 billion fiscal cliff. The $110 billion sequester, which his own Secretary of Defense said will be “devastating” to the Department, is inching closer. Tax increases of $330 billion are set to hit in January 2013. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says going over the fiscal cliff would lead to unemployment above nine percent.
The President has failed to work in a bipartisan manner for fundamental tax reform. He has not presented any plan to reform the individual tax code, and his proposal to reform the corporate code took the form of a white paper that was so short on details that it has been ignored since its release. When Congress directed President Obama to submit a report on how he would implement the sequester, he completely failed to provide the required details. The President and Senate Democrats have instead focused their attention on proposed tax increases on small businesses.
National Security
Presidential candidate Obama in 2007 said that once he was elected the world would look at America differently. The Obama-Biden campaign specifically promised it would renew America’s standing in the world. In 2009 he travelled to Cairo to offer “a new beginning” to the Muslim world. In his 2011 State of the Union address, the President claimed, “American leadership has been renewed and America’s standing has been restored.” But last month, anti-American protests spread to more than 30 countries, and terrorists murdered the U.S. Ambassador to Libya.
Iran: On President Obama’s watch, Iran continues to accelerate its illicit nuclear program, bringing it ever closer to a nuclear weapons capability.
Russia: Despite the so-called “reset” in our countries’ relations, Russia has vetoed three United Nations Security Council resolutions pertaining to the massacres in Syria, has rejected the idea of additional sanctions against Iran for its illicit nuclear program, refused to condemn systematic human rights abuses in North Korea, held parliamentary elections in 2011 that even Secretary of State Clinton called “neither free nor fair,” recently terminated all USAID programs in Russia, and announced it would not renew a nuclear security program with the United States.
Israel: Although President Obama claims “I have Israel’s back,” there are too many media stories to count about the widening gulf in the U.S.-Israel relationship in general and specifically how the United States and Israel see the issue of Iran’s nuclear program differently.
North Korea: On President Obama’s watch, North Korea sank a warship of ally South Korea, tested a nuclear weapon in May 2009, and in April 2009 conducted tests of a missile specifically directed at threatening the U.S. homeland. It then tested the missile again in April 2012, two months after the Obama Administration had offered North Korea massive amounts of food aid to do what it had already promised to do: not test long-range missile technology.
Guantanamo: As one of his first acts in office, President Obama ordered the detention center at Guantanamo Bay closed within a year. There are 166 detainees remaining there today.
Energy
The national average price of one gallon of regular gasoline is $3.52 today, nearly double what it was when President Obama took office. And 2012 is on pace to be the most expensive year for gasoline in history.
The average retail price of residential electricity is $12.04 per kilowatt hour today, up 10 percent from when President Obama took office, and 2012 is on pace to be the most expensive year for residential electricity in history.
“Households paid a record $1,419 on average for electricity in 2010 … The jump has added about $300 a year to what households pay for electricity … Electricity is consuming a greater share of Americans' after-tax income than at any time since 1996 — about $1.50 of every $100 in income at a time when income growth has stagnated.”
– USA Today
The President has tried to mislead the American people into believing his policies have led to more oil production today than at any time in the past eight years. In fact, on federal lands the President controls, oil exploration plummeted by 14 percent from 2010 to 2011. Gains in oil production made during the past three years took place on private and state lands not under the President’s control and in spite of his restrictive policies.
The President blocked the Keystone XL oil pipeline and lobbied against it. He’s tried to take credit for helping to expedite construction of a portion of the pipeline between Oklahoma and Gulf Coast refineries. Since this portion does not cross an international border, President Obama has no actual authority to approve or disapprove it.
Health Care
Medicare: The Medicare program is predicted to become insolvent as early as 2017. Instead of taking steps to fix the problem, the President and Senate Democrats made the problem worse. The President’s health care law raided $716 billion from Medicare to start a brand new insurance program for other people.
Doc Fix: Obamacare failed to fix Medicare Physician Payments. Every year, doctors taking Medicare patients face the threat of deep cuts due to the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula that governs the growth of Medicare physician payments from year to year. Most lawmakers agree the SGR needs to be replaced. Yet Obamacare did not contain a permanent “doc fix.” Democrats have done nothing since to improve the situation.
Insurance Premiums: President Obama and Senate Democrats promised their health care law would reduce premiums by $2,500 per family. The President, in fact, promised these reductions would happen within his first term. An annual employer survey found the opposite. Health care premiums have risen $3,065.
Broken Senate
Senate Democrats have run the body with a heavy hand and without even attempting bipartisanship or normal order.
Majority Leader Reid has drastically curtailed the ability of Senators to amend legislation. The Majority Leader is always the first to be recognized on the Senate floor. He can use that power to offer a series of Democratic amendments to pending legislation in a way that prevents Republicans from offering any of their ideas. This is called “filling the tree.” Majority Leader Reid once insisted that the practice “runs against the basic nature of the Senate.” Clearly he has abandoned that view, since he’s employed the tactic a record 66 times.
Senate Democrats have all but eliminated the committee process for important matters. Legislation generally goes first to a committee of Senators with specialized experience in the issue. The committee holds hearings and legislative markups where a group of Senators can discuss proposed legislation in detail, consider a wide range of amendments and allow for participation by all Senators. But according to the Congressional Research Service, Majority Leader Reid has bypassed the committee process 68 times – a record 30 of them in the 110th Congress alone.
On one pressing issue after another, President Obama and the Democrats who control the Senate have failed to offer the leadership these times demand and the American people deserve. In one recent poll, 62 percent of Americans said they were looking for Washington to make a major change in policy for the next four years. As we head into the lame duck session of Congress in November and December, the most immediate change America could make would be finally to have leadership in Washington.
