150 Reasons Why Barack Obama Is the Worst President in History (3 page)

19.
Largest Deficits In History

It should come as no surprise that under a president who sees government as the answer to all of life’s problems that the deficit would skyrocket. Not only did it skyrocket, but Obama has given us the highest U.S. deficits in history: $1.4 trillion, $1.3 trillion, $1.3 trillion, and $1.1 trillion. Breitbart.com’s William Bigelow put these numbers into perspective, “There have never been deficits remotely approaching these; the last year of George W. Bush’s tenure, the deficit was less than half of a trillion dollars.”
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And that isn’t the end of it. Obama’s own budget predictions (which are chock full of pie-in-the-sky projections of higher-than-expected revenues and lower-than-expected expenses) predict a trillion dollar deficit for fiscal year 2013 and a total of $8.3 trillion in total deficits by 2022.
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Already, in fiscal year 2013, the deficit is running ahead of the same period in fiscal year 2012, with the federal government borrowing an average of $4.8 billion a day since the start of Fiscal Year 2013.
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A far cry from Obama’s promise to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term.

20.
Redefining Poverty

For decades, poverty has been defined by how much it costs to provide the basics – if you can afford the basics, you’re not in poverty; if you can’t, then you are poor.

As costs of basic necessities go down, it is possible that fewer people may meet the definition of being poor and way not need the welfare state as much or at all anymore. And if you don’t need the welfare state, you may not need the Democratic Party either.

So, what did Barack Obama do? He changed the definition of poverty to ensure that no matter how rich we, as a people, become there will always be people in poverty needing a host of government services to tend to their needs. Obama’s new formula for calculating poverty isn’t based on need, but “equality” - its not so much a matter of do you make enough to eat, be housed and have medical care, but how much you earn in relation to those richer than you.
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Therefore, under Obama’s new method, you can be considered poor even if you can afford more than your basic needs and some luxuries as long as you’re total income is still less than the average of those you live around. This makes the elimination of poverty impossible, unless everyone’s incomes are equal. Therefore, we can only eliminate poverty by adopting Socialism.

21.
More Debt Than All Past Presidents … Combined

As a presidential candidate in 2008, Obama called President George W. Bush “unpatriotic” and “irresponsible” for adding $4 trillion to the national debt during his two terms. But,
according to TreasuryDirect.gov,
here are the facts about our nation’s debt after one term under Obama:

Publicly Held Debt

January 20, 2009: $6.31 trillion

January 22, 2013: $11.57 trillion (+83%)

Gross Federal Debt

January 20, 2009: $10.6 trillion

January 22, 2013: $16.43 trillion (+55%)

It’s impossible to deny that Obama has exploded the nation’s debt, more than any other president, and yet, it’s apparently not enough for him. In November of 2012, the Obama Administration offered a proposal to Republican leaders to avoid the “fiscal cliff” which would give Obama unlimited power to
raise
the debt ceiling whenever he wants, without congressional approval.
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Even in a good economy, we hope that our tax dollars are being used wisely and efficiently. As Americans are forced to cut back our own spending to make ends meet, it doesn’t seem too much to ask that the government be responsible stewards of the taxes we pay.

What did we get when Obama took office? We got a president who was more interested in exploiting the perks of the office at our expense, dishing out taxpayer dollars to his loyal supporters, and forcing the taxpayers to share the costs of his reelection campaign… all while the economy got worse, debt skyrocketed, and jobs disappeared.

22.
Taxpayer-Funded Vacations

The presidency is probably the most stressful job in the world and each president has found the need to vacation while in office. No one complains about that and everyone understands that if a president doesn’t sometimes decompress and renew his energy, he will not be an effective president. But with President Obama, vacations have become so frequent and lavish that we must question whether Obama views the presidency as the most important job in the world, or as a means to living a swank lifestyle.

From January 2009 to March of 2012 President Obama and/or his family had gone on sixteen vacations.
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Some of the more notable vacations include Michelle Obama’s luxury trip to Spain in the summer of 2010, which cost taxpayers $467,585,
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and the African safari in June 2011 that cost $424,000.
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More recently, the Obama family went on a 20-day vacation in Hawaii in December of 2012 that cost American taxpayers a whopping $4 million dollars.
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Showing his complete contempt for the American taxpayer, during the height of the “fiscal cliff” negotiations, Obama spent taxpayer dollars flying back from his Hawaii vacation to DC, and then spent more flying back to Hawaii after Congress enacted the “fix” to the fiscal cliff; the estimated cost of all this jet-setting: $3 million.
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Obama’s defenders are quick to point to Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, for his frequent trips to his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Of course, they neglect to mention that Bush consistently conducted White House business there, including hosting foreign dignitaries and members of his cabinet.

The worst aspect of the Obama’s family’s frequent and expensive vacations is the insensitivity shown towards Americans that are still struggling to get by because of
Obama’s
inability to fix the economy. In 2009, the term ‘staycation’ was added to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary due to the popularity of local day trips or home vacations in lieu of longer trips away from home because of the bad economy.
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Perhaps Obama should have shown a little more empathy for his fellow Americans and stayed stateside? At least until he gets the economy back to where it was before he got into office?

23.
Campaigning On Taxpayer Money

While Presidents of the United States are provided taxpayer-funded security and the use of Air Force One, when a president runs for reelection, their campaigns are expected to pay the costs of campaign trips, including those costs borne by local governments to provide security, etc. for the campaign events. But, there is a gray area. By combining campaign trips with official business, the costs can be shared, or even completely covered by taxpayers.

While presidents running for reelection have in the past combined official White House trips with campaign events (thus sharing the cost of the trips between their campaigns and taxpayers) Barack Obama made this practice an art form during his reelection campaign.

When Obama attended a lavish celebrity-studded fundraiser in Manhattan, which raised $4.5 million for his campaign, and it was reported that the trip was partially funded by taxpayers because Obama made a short visit to Ground Zero for an official event.
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It was one of many such instances in which Obama had the taxpayers share the burden of paying for him to campaign around the country.

When George W. Bush ran for reelection in 2004, he held a mere 57 fundraisers. In the year following the launch of his reelection campaign, Barack Obama had held 124, or about one every three days.
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A formal complaint by the Republican National Committee noted that alleged government-business events were occurring in battleground states and often resembled campaign rallies.
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Obama’s campaign or the Democratic National Committee also often refused the pay struggling cities nationwide for the costs they incurred for extra security provided for Obama. Some examples:

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In the city of Westport, CT, Obama held a $35,800 per-person fundraiser in August of 2012. This resulted in additional costs to the city of $14,812 in overtime payments for police officers and firefighters. The Obama campaign refused to pay these costs.
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In December 2012, the Obama campaign refused the request by the city of Portsmouth, NH to reimburse $30,000 in costs for a campaign stop in September.
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When both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney held separate fundraisers at Newport Beach, California in 2012, both campaigns were billed for the security costs for those political events. Romney’s campaign paid their bill. Obama’s campaign did not.
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So, when Obama wasn’t having all taxpayers share the cost of his campaigning, he was sticking it to small cities and towns that have been struggling on his watch. What a gentleman.

24.
Taxpayer Dollars For Hired Trolls

You probably never thought your tax dollars would be paying for bloggers to anonymously troll websites. But the Obama Administration did just that. In 2009, it was revealed that Obama’s Justice Department, under the leadership of Attorney General Eric Holder, was hiring bloggers to participate in a secret propaganda campaign by anonymously posting comments on newspaper websites with stories critical of Obama, Holder, and the Justice Department.
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This was a gross misuse of taxpayer dollars in an agency that supposed to enforce the nation’s laws without political influence or motivation.

25.
Taxpayer Dollars For Obama Donors

Obama came in to office promising to run the most honest and transparent government in history, and end the influence of lobbyists and money in Washington.
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This would have been a noble promise to keep, if Obama had any intention of keeping it.

Selling access and influence has become the rule of the Obama Administration. If you want Obama’s support, or a nomination, the best way to get it is write a check.

Naturally, for Obama, this has come to mean that Obama runs the most corrupt and opaque government ever. Since taking office, Obama has shown that the best way to get Obama to do something is to buy Obama’s support. Since January 20, 2009, we’ve seen:

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Donors to Obama’s campaigns have received back $21,000 in taxpayer money for each dollar they gave to Obama.
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Obama’s donors awarded major government contracts for their firm’s and given positions to advise the government on where government money should be spent.
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Obama donors were literally given a seat at Obama’s table during the “fiscal cliff” meetings at the end of 2012.
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Major corporations with business before the American government were permitted to donate at least $283 million to Obama’s second inauguration.
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Obama establish a permanent campaign organization, Organizing for Action, to give corporations and individuals access and influence in exchange for donations.
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Top donors and fundraisers getting plum government jobs, ambassadorships and other appointments.
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80 percent of Obama’s “green energy” loans went to his own donors.
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This hasn’t stopped Obama from speaking out against the very practice that has become the norm of his administration. During his 2012 State of the Union address, Barack Obama criticized “corrosive influence of money in politics.”
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He should know.

26.
High Paying Jobs for Government Workers

The median household income for Americans as of the end of 2011 was $50,054 per year.
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This represented a 1.5 percent reduction in income from 2010 and all data for 2012 indicates that incomes will be down again. While most Americans have been suffering this reduction in income, many federal employees have enjoyed much higher pay.

In fact, 459,016 federal workers (about 20 percent of the total federal workforce) make $100,000 or more per year, or nearly twice the income of the average American.
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Adding insult to injury, Obama ordered a pay raise for federal workers, ending a two-year pay freeze.
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A strange move with an economy still struggling. Many Americans feel, as the saying goes, “keeping your job is the new raise.” So, when Obama gives federal workers a raise in an economy still struggling, it’s more than insulting, it’s just wrong.

27.
Obama Administration Officials Wasting Taxpayer Dollars

Leon Panetta has had a long career in Washington. Under Obama, he has served as CIA Director and Secretary of Defense. He’s accomplished a lot in his career. Panetta reportedly played a significant role in convincing a hesitant Obama to order the attack on Osama bin Laden’s compound in which the terrorist mastermind was killed.
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But Panetta has also distinguished himself in another way. His nearly weekly trips between Washington and his family’s walnut ranch in California have earned him the honor of being the most expensive Secretary of Defense in history.

By April 2012, the cost of flying him home to California had already reached $860,000.
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According to the Pentagon, he’d made 27 round trips in his first nine months as Secretary of Defense.

Of course, when the word got out about his frequent flying on the taxpayers’ dime, Panetta expressed regret, but still defended his trips. He’s also refused to give a full accounting of the number of trips he’s taken, and their cost to the taxpayers. According to the
Washington Times
, each round trip of Panetta’s “cost the Pentagon an estimated $32,000, but Mr. Panetta is only required to pay $630 per trip — the cost of an equivalent round-trip commercial flight.”
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At that rate, the total cost of Panetta’s weekly commutes over his tenure as Secretary of Defense would be over $3 million.

What does this have to do with Obama? Obama himself knew these trips would be a condition of Panetta’s service in his administration, and despite the poor economy, condoned the arrangement:

For security reasons, the government requires all defense secretaries to use the military equivalent of a Gulfstream jet for all travel, and when agreeing to take top jobs at the CIA and Pentagon, Mr. Panetta had worked out a deal with President Obama to allow the trips back to California, a defense official said at the time.

“The White House understood when Mr. Panetta took the job that he would return to Monterey to visit his family, as he did when he was director of the CIA,” a senior administration official said at the time. “That’s where his family lives, after all.”
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Tell that to the millions of Americans who have to pay the cost of going to work everyday, or to the thousands of men and women overseas protecting our country, who don’t get to go home every weekend.

28.
Stimulus Loans for Tax Cheats

Obama’s 2009 Stimulus was a failure in many ways, but perhaps even more shocking than the program’s inability to stimulate the economy is the amount of taxpayer dollars that was given to people who were tax cheats. By law, tax cheats were not eligible to receive any money from the government’s mortgage insurance program. But, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) had no means to determine which applicants owed back taxes and should have their applications denied. In the end, $1.4 billion in stimulus loans and $27 million in tax credits were given to tax delinquents.
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29.
Tax Dollars for Terrorist Groups

On a Friday night in April of 2012, it was revealed that Barack Obama bypassed Congress in order to send $192 million in aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA). Funding for the PA had been frozen by Congress after PA president Mahmoud Abbas requested that the U.N. recognize a Palestinian state. Obama claimed his waiver was important to the national security of the United States. A bizarre claim indeed, since his actions came just months after the terrorist group Hamas became a partner with the PA. In other words, Obama bypassed Congress to give nearly $200 million of our tax dollars to a terrorist organization.
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