By Kyle Sepe
Staff Columnist
Nearly 47 million Americans are living on food stamps according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s 15 million more since President Barack Obama took office. Most of the dreadful numbers account for a noteworthy increase in unemployed Americans: 7.8 percent in January 2009 to 8.1 percent in August 2012.
Yet less Americans are actually in the labor work force than when President Obama assumed office. For every job created, four people left the work force. We’ve also sadly experienced the worst quarter of economic growth since last year: a dismal 1.7 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. Thus, it is obvious that President Obama’s economic polices have failed America.
Some would argue that we are moving in the right direction with unemployment decreasing from its 10 percent high in 2009. But if the unemployment rate is decreasing, shouldn’t the number of food stamp recipients decrease as well? Shouldn’t the number of people in the work force be increasing, not decreasing? Some would also make the case that we are still recovering from the worst economic recession since the Great Depression. If the statistics don’t prove that the Obama economy is improving, then his policies haven’t worked.
In 2008, candidate Obama said, “America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better…the way Bush [President George W. Bush] has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion from the first 42 presidents. Number 43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome so we have $9 trillion in debt that we are going to have to pay back…it’s unpatriotic.”
President Obama has raised the national debt by $5.5 trillion in less than four years. If spending $4 trillion in eight years is “unpatriotic,” then what do you call spending $5.5 trillion in less than four years?
President Obama’s plan for leadership: spend more. This isn’t moving forward at all. Young Americans cannot afford this reckless spending. He still has yet to pass a budget since he took office; he can’t even get support from his own political party. Now young voters are faced with the financial burden of Obama’s failure of economic management.
I thought America elected President Obama to fix this economy and to provide a hopeful future. Why should we give President Obama another four years to do what he promised four years ago? It’s disappointing that President Obama’s polices have not lived up to the “hope and change” America voted for in 2008. Where’s the hope and change in 2012?
If you are an Independent, Democrat, or Republican, we can all agree the economy is not where it needs to be, and change is needed. If President Obama continues the same failed economic policies implemented in his first term, why would they work in a second term?
He stated very clearly in 2009, “If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.”
Therefore, America needs Governor Mitt Romney who has confidence in a free-market economy with a record of job creation and successful economic policies. Between being a successful data-driven CEO of a major private equity firm, reviving the near-bankrupt 2002 U.S. Winter Olympics, creating jobs as governor of Massachusetts, and balancing a budget with compromise from both political parties, Romney is the kind of leader we need to fix this economy.
Our generation doesn’t have to see these failed results of the Obama economy forever. If things aren’t what you expected, you have the power to make a change.
We don’t often get a second chance to make the right decisions in our lives. But we do this November.