There’s Broken Promises And Then There’s The “Hope And Change Guy”

Just about every president in the history of our great nation has struggled to fulfill all the promises made my campaigning for the votes of the people. However, seldom do we find a person who fails as miserably as President Barack Obama has in his first year of office. When you consider that he has a democratic congress at his side the lack of accomplishments made by the president should be alarming. It literally appears that he went through great lengths to mislead the American people of his intentions in an effort to gain their votes. After all, had he said from his campaign platform that he was going to triple the nation’s deficit to a record $1.4 trillion, cram healthcare reform down the throats of an American public that isn’t wanting it and drive our country towards socialism, ALL IN JUST HIS FIRST YEAR IN OFFICE, would you have voted for him? He knew you wouldn’t so he sold you a line of hope and change. Now with a plummeting approval rating it appears that Americans are hoping he’s not successful in the type of change he’s trying to bring. Here’s a look at what Obama said while campaigning as opposed to what he actually did during his first year in office.

* To President Obama’s credit he did inherit an economy that was already in a downward spiral. To help sway votes Obama states in a Dover, N.H. campaign stop that, "no family making less than $250,000 will see their taxes increase - not your income taxes, not your payroll taxes, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes." What he failed to add was, “unless you’re a smoker!”

Obama signed into law a 159% increase in the tax on a pack of cigarettes. Other tobacco products were dealt a similar or much steeper increase to help pay for a children's health initiative, enabling him to keep another promise to make sure all kids have health insurance. So now we’re breaking one promise to fulfill another, a sign of things to come. While I’m not a smoker myself statistics show that that the majority of smokers are in tax brackets well below $250,000 and Obama knew that.

* Obama promised to cut the federal budget deficit by more than half in his first term. He’s really behind the 8-ball on this because, as we’ve already discussed, the record deficit hit in his first year. So far the first two months of the 2010 fiscal year was almost 6% higher than the first two months of 2009.

* While campaigning, Obama pledged to pull all U.S. combat troops out within 16 months. Now, as president, he’s pushed that deadline back two months, to August 2010. After that, he will leave 35,000 to 50,000 military personnel in Iraq through 2011 to train, equip and advise Iraqi security forces, and to help in counterterrorism missions.

* While campaigning, Obama said that he would close Guantanamo Bay, which he called "a recruiting tool for our enemies." Obama did order the purchase of an Illinois prison to house up to 100 Guantanamo detainees. Still, Guantanamo cannot be closed until the disposition of more than 200 remaining detainees is resolved. Congress won’t fund bringing them to the U.S. and other countries don’t want them on their soil either.

* While campaigning, Obama vowed to use "tough, direct diplomacy" to keep Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Now that he’s in office Iran is laughing at him as they are ignoring his diplomacy and building towards nuclear capability.

* On his 2008 campaign Web site, Obama declared that "we must redouble our efforts to determine if the measures implemented since 9/11 are adequately addressing the threats our nation continues to face from airplane-based terrorism," including screening all passengers against "a comprehensive terrorist watch list."

In December a man on the terrorist watch list boarded an airplane bound for Detroit, MI with a bomb in his pants.

* As far as healthcare goes I can’t remember a bigger scandal in Washington than what we’ve seen from this congress. Billions of dollars have been spent buying votes to push this through and the voice of the American people has been greatly ignored. While campaigning Obama said, "We'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies." The problem is that the constituents don’t want this healthcare reform and Obama’s administration isn’t arguing on their behalf. Instead secret deals are being made behind closed doors and the constitution is being ripped to shreds in the process. As for C-SPAN, they haven’t been a part of the process.

* While campaigning Obama promised to be a good steward of our money. "When I'm president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely," Obama.

As president, Obama hasn't been willing to veto bills approved by his fellow Democratics on Capitol Hill. He signed a $410 billion spending bill that included 7,991 so-called "earmarks" totaling $5.5 billion. He had also promised to require lawmakers seeking money for earmarks to justify their requests in writing 72 hours before they're voted on in Congress. Nope, that hasn’t happened yet either.

Other things that haven’t happened yet are a pledge to post legislation online for five days before acting on it (this promise was broken with his very first bill) and a pan on lobbyists serving in his administration hasn’t been fulfilled either as he currently has some included.

What we’ve seen over that past twelve months is either blatant lying to the American people, in order to win votes, with no intention on coming through on those promises or complete incompetence by President Obama in having no idea how to get done what he said he would. I really don’t know which one is worse. Who wants to step up and chose the lesser of these two evils?