150 Reasons Why Barack Obama Is the Worst President in History (5 page)

The federal response to Katrina was governed by the 1988 Stafford Act, which says that in natural disasters on-shore states are in charge, not Washington. The federal obligation is to “support . . . State and local assistance efforts” by providing whatever resources a governor requests and then writing big checks for the cleanup. Mr. Bush had to deal with a Louisiana governor and a New Orleans mayor who were, by federal law, in charge.

But BP’s well was drilled in federal waters. Washington, not Louisiana, is in charge. This is Mr. Obama’s responsibility. He says his administration has been prepared for the worst from the start. Mr. Obama’s failure to lead in cleaning up the spill could lead voters to echo his complaint in Katrina’s aftermath: “I wish that the federal government had been up to the task.”
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Even the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling (established by Obama via executive order) found that the Obama Administration grossly underestimated the amount of oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, slowed response efforts, and withheld its worst-case estimates from the public and overstated the effectiveness of the cleanup efforts.
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Given Obama’s past criticisms of the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, one might think he’d have done a better job, and not had his administration lie to protect his image.

39.
Failure Reduce the VA Benefits Claims Backlog

There is no one in America who is owed more than our veterans, especially those who have been injured in connection with their service. Obama promised to end the horrendous backlog in Veteran’s Administration benefit claims (some claims can languish for years without resolution). This is an issue that the president should spare no effort in getting fixed. Unfortunately, the backlog of VA claims has increased by 179 percent on Obama’s watch, rising to nearly 900,000 incomplete claims.
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In addition to being yet another broken Obama promise, this is a national disgrace.

40.
Killing The Welfare Work Requirement

Few people would claim that Welfare Reform, which was passed by a Republican Congress in 1996 and signed by Democrat President Bill Clinton, was not a success. Welfare caseloads declined, child poverty declined, and poverty rate for black children fell to its lowest level ever.
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In spite of all these great benefits of reform, Obama filled the Department of Health and Human Services with opponents of welfare reform. In July of 2012, Obama quietly announced a plan that would effectively end the work requirement from welfare, a key element of its success.
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Obama and his supporters vehemently denied that his plan would gut Welfare Reform or end the work requirement. But, even Ron Haskins—the de-facto author of the bill as a congressional staffer in 1996—conceded that if there was any way to undermine the work requirement than Obama’s plan was the “way to do it.”
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But does Obama even have the legal authority to make these changes? The Government Accountability Office says no. Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and John Kline (R-MN), chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, explain that the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program created by the 1996 welfare reforms, which include the work requirements, can’t simply be overridden:

A Ways and Means Committee summary of the 1996 reforms issued shortly after the law was signed is explicit on this point: “Waivers granted after the date of enactment [of the 1996 law] may not override provisions of the TANF law that concern mandatory work requirements.”

The president’s plan to waive the work requirements is not only illegal, it also is being implemented through an unlawful end run around Congress. The GAO determined the Obama administration’s proposal to waive work requirements should have been submitted to Congress for review and possible disapproval. The administration didn’t do that and said it does not need to.
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It takes a lot of chutzpah to gut welfare reform… and it takes even more to do so illegally.

41.
Cutting Funding to Fight AIDS

George W. Bush’s initiative to fight AIDS around the world, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), has saved millions of lives, particularly in Africa. From the program’s launch in 2003 to the time Bush left office, the number of HIV-infected people in Africa that were getting proper treatment went from less than 50,000 to 2 million.
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His efforts didn’t go unnoticed by the people of the African continent either. When President Bush took a farewell tour of Africa near the end of his second term, massive crowds of grateful Africans cheered for him.
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Few would argue that the effort to fight AIDS around the world is a bad thing. Yet, despite the massive amounts of spending increases that have occurred on Obama’s watch, he has cut funding for PEPFAR.
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Obama’s cuts put as many as 640,000 people around the world at risk of no treatment, with an outsized, devastating effect on Africa where most AIDS deaths occur.
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The AIDS Healthcare Foundation was highly critical of Obama’s cuts, which came after he had promised to expand the fight against AIDS months earlier:

“This latest action merely confirms what people with HIV/AIDS and their advocates have long suspected – the President simply is not committed to fighting global AIDS. Coming on the heels of the President’s flowery rhetoric last December, the cynicism is simply breathtaking,” said Michael Weinstein, President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which provides free HIV/AIDS medical care to over 125,000 people in 26 countries abroad.
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It’s hard to imagine why Obama would choose to cut funding to fight AIDS around the world when he’s given millions of dollars to terrorist groups.

42.
Not Enforcing Existing Gun Laws

Obama tried very hard in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre to turn people’s anger away from the perpetrator of the crime and towards guns and gun owners. Obama hoped to leverage this into political support for his various gun-control measures. In addition to this being a sick, political ploy, it also ignored the fact that over Obama’s first term, federal law enforcement had grown increasingly slack in enforcing federal gun laws.

On George W. Bush’s watch, prosecutions for gun law violations reached a record high of 10,937, but under Obama, that number has dropped to about 6,000 cases
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a nearly 45 percent drop.
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But, violent crime has only dropped about 17 percent from 2004-2011.
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Additionally, despite the long-term downward trend of violent crime, in 2011, violent crime surged, increasing 18 percent from 2010, while the Obama Administration wasn’t enforcing existing gun laws.
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Instead of enforcing existing laws, Obama chose instead to exploit a tragedy for political cover in order to impose his own, more aggressive agenda against guns. It is quite clear that Obama’s political agenda trumps the routine chores of governing—and trumps the safety of the American people.

43.
Superstorm Sandy Photo Op

Superstorm Sandy ripped in to the East Coast of the United States in the final week of Campaign 2012 and Obama, sensing his first opportunity to look like a President, was off like a shot to New Jersey. Not, of course, to actually do anything, but to get in some really cool photos of himself with Republican Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey. “Look at me! I’m a bipartisan leader who is out here helping the folks!”

With the photos taken and spread relentlessly around the mainstream media, Obama was back at his second favorite activity: campaigning (golf is still number one, of course). And while the Obama campaign basked in the warm glow of overwhelmingly positive post-Sandy coverage (which may have helped clinch the deal for Obama’s reelection), the people of New Jersey and New York suffered through a level of government incompetence not seen since the Katrina disaster.
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Weeks after the disaster, people were still without power and were short of food, clothing and the streets still hadn’t been fully cleared of the debris. Once he was safely reelected, did Obama decide to grace the people of New Jersey with another visit or lend a Presidential hand in clearing away the bureaucratic obstruction on relief efforts? No. He went golfing.
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44.
Killing The Keystone XL Pipeline

Under Obama, we’ve seen energy prices continually go up. Taking meaningful steps to make America more energy independent would go a long way towards reducing the prices of energy. Instead, we’ve seen Obama waste billions on failed green energy companies, and refuse to tap into domestic energy resources.

The Keystone pipeline would deliver 700,000 barrels a day of crude oil from Canada to coastal Texas oil refineries. Delivering oil via pipeline is more cost effective than shipping via rail. The pipeline would also create an estimated 20,000 jobs. More jobs and cheaper energy are exactly what this country needs, but Obama chose to deny TransCanada’s permit on January 18, 2012.
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While the American people stand to lose greatly from the rejection of the pipeline, at least one person stands to benefit: billionaire Warren Buffet.

Less than a week after Obama rejected the pipeline’s permit,
The
Washington Times
reported that Warren Buffet stands to profit significantly if the pipeline is never built. Berkshire Hathaway Inc., a multinational conglomerate holding company controlled by Buffet owns, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe LLC “which is among the railroads that would transport oil produced in western Canada if the pipeline isn’t built.”
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Since Buffet was always on call to answer “yes, sir” whenever Obama asked us to “tax the rich” (even though Buffet is fighting the IRS over billions in unpaid taxes), killing Keystone was the least Obama could do for his fat cat crony.

45.
War on Coal

Coal is, by far, the largest source of electricity production in the United States. As of 2011, coal produced 42 percent of America’s electricity, with the next highest source being natural gas at 25 percent. “Renewables”, Obama’s much-touted “green energy”, provided only 13 percent. And while coal as a source of electricity has dropped over the years (it was at a peak of 53 percent in the 1990s), it is still projected to provide fully 35 percent of our electricity in 2040, at a time when “renewables” will still only account for 16 percent.
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Given all this, great care should be taken by the United States government to ensure a steady supply of coal for America. But that is not how Obama sees it: he sees his job as being to destroy coal as an industry.

In fact, that was one of Obama’s 2008 campaign promises: he stated that anyone could build a coal-fired electricity plant, if they wanted, but that his policies will bankrupt them.
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In this, we have a definite promise kept by Obama: he has gone after the coal industry as if it were the source of evil in the world. Using the heavy club of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Obama has made it so that more than 200 coal-fired power plants will shut down over the next three to five years.
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There is no word from Obama on what will replace these coal-fired power plants, nor what average, working folks will do as they either suffer blackouts or have their power bill shoot up as more expensive sources of electricity are used.

46.
War on Offshore Oil Drilling

Obama has been against utilizing America’s vast offshore oil resources in spite of the fact that Americans currently are buying tons of oil from nations that not only bear us ill will, but also specifically seek to attack us by every means possible.

Using the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as a pretext, President Obama issued a moratorium on offshore oil drilling, ostensibly so that drilling procedures could be reviewed to ensure safety. But the Gulf oil spill happened in April of 2010, while Obama’s budget proposal submitted to Congress in February of 2010 indicated that government revenues from offshore oil drilling would drop from $1.5 billion in 2009 to $413 million in 2015.
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Obama clearly envisioned big restrictions on offshore drilling. He just needed an environmental disaster to use as political cover.

47.
Destroying American Energy

It would have been bad enough if Obama had just wasted taxpayer dollars on green energy scams like Solyndra, promised to cripple the U.S. coal industry, and banned offshore drilling. But, Obama’s energy policy has consistently been hostile towards traditional domestic energy production and thus, energy independence.

Since taking office Obama has:

Rolled back plans to develop shale oil production.
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Worked to derail the hydraulic fracturing (”fracking”) drilling technology, which promises to create hundreds of thousands of American jobs as well as make the United States vastly less dependent upon foreign oil and natural gas supplies.
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