Stimulus Package While it is probably true that the Stimulus Package has not created many permanent jobs, it has saved for awhile thousands of teachers, firemen, and police jobs. If these people had been put out on the street, certainly the economy would be in worse shape today. And the amount of highway construction going on is immense. It is the nature of construction jobs that they are not permanent, but thousands of workers must have been hired for these highway jobs.
Cash For Clunkers The claim was made on Cash for Clunkers, that it "just" advanced the sale of automobiles that would have been bought anyway. That does not seem to be the case in that the automobile companies continue to sell a lot of autos and are turning nice profits, even GM and Ford. The purpose of Cash For Clunkers was to get some low mileage cars off the road and that it certainly did.
Healthcare Of course I wish the Healthcare bill was a cleaner bill rather than the 2,040 page monstrosity it became, but in modern America, you seem to have to buy all sorts of extraneous things in major legislation to get it passed. And after that some important things weren't in the bill like single payer, Public Option,* tort reform, and completely getting rid of Medicare Advantage which costs 15% more than regular Medicare. At that, the Health Care bill, for example, has 788 amendments of which 161 were by members of the GOP (http://www.slate.com/id/2223023/). But finally after decades we have something nearly universal that we can start with. Obama said he would get a Health Care bill when he was campaigning for President, and he got it in spite of massive opposition. In our own extended family, the provision to increase the age at which children may be covered by the parents health care plan to 26 has been very important for a partly employed graduate student. It may well be that health plans will cost somewhat more, but there is more than just "me" in morality, and , finally, the right thing has been done or at least begun by covering some 30 million people that are currently uninsured. Many Presidents in the last 70 years have tried to get a Healthcare bill passed and failed. Obama succeeded.
FinReg (also known as Dodd-Frank) At 848 pages, the FinReg bill was comparatively brief; yet who knows what is in such a monstrosity? It took two years to write and get passed. The financial crisis we were in was so severe that I am really surprised that more Republicans didn't feel compelled to vote for it. Of course the financial industry got it watered down, but it seems to me that most analysts that seem objective feel it will do good. For example, Henry Paulson who was Bush-43's Treasury Secretary is pleased with the bill.** Other advances include placing "... derivatives on exchanges and clearinghouses, by creating a systemic risk council, by forcing banks to provide "funeral plans" that explain how to unwind them in the event of a failure, by creating an Office of Financial Research to collect daily data and provide quick analysis on transactions, there's much less chance that a financial crisis would leave regulators totally confused about what's going on, and who owes what to whom."* For more see the Ezra Klein article.** It is true that much is yet to be worked out on implementing the bill as is the case to some extent in the Healthcare bill too. For these reasons, it is probably best to slow down and work out these two major bills before taking up others like energy policy. That is a pity but is needed.
BP Dividend Elimination and Remediation Fund I have covered this item elsewhere: http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2010/06/if-it-wasnt-so-tragic-it-would-be-funny.html. In brief, first people laughed at Obama to think he could get a huge company to eliminate its dividend (said to be too important) and set up a $20 billion fund to reimburse damage done to businesses and individuals. When, in fact, BP voluntarily complied, the cry went up that he was too strong a president. Do we want a strong president or don't we in times of disaster? Well, I'm very impressed. Readers may also wish to take a look at a related item on BP: http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2010/06/its-only-matter-of-time-before-we-hear.html.
Unemployment Unfortunately for President Obama, the single most important statistic for reelection is the unemployment picture. When the voters perceive increasing unemployment on election day (whether it is true or not), the incumbent loses. This was the case with Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush. Of course in the next 26 months, the current dismal unemployment picture could turn around, as it did for President Reagan, but our current economic picture is much more severe than it was in the early 1980s and a vigorous growing employment picture seems unlikely. Therefore I feel that President Obama probably will be a one-term president no matter his other outstanding accomplishments; however, we have learned that it is dangerous to count out The Comeback Kid.
Notes added For 2011: Obama's accomplishments continue. His orders led to the killing of Osama Bin Laden on May 2, 2011. More controversial is the killing of the American trader Anwar Al Awlaki in Yemen on September 30, 2011.*** Got the new Start Treaty ratified by congress (Surprising opposition to this is what makes it so significant.); it went into effect on February 5, 2011. Lifted restrictions on stem cell research on March 9, 2011. Eliminated Don't Ask, Don't Tell on September 20, 2011, over strong congressional opposition.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-payer_health_care; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_health_insurance_option
**"We would have loved to have this for Lehman Bros.," Henry Paulson told Andrew Ross Sorkin: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/07/what_finreg_does.html
*** http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/opinion/justifying-the-killing-of-an-american.html
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