By David Hurtado
As the 2012 election season comes into swing, the American people have two options on the table.
We can either reelect President Obama and have four more years of “hope and change,” or cast our ballot for Governor Romney and end the shadow that has fallen over America. President Obama is many things, but an effective leader he is not.
For starters, a good leader does not continuously blame his predecessor for what he inherited. Democrats took full control of Congress in 2006 and the presidency in 2008. For two whole years after, Obama had ample opportunity to pass laws designed to repair the economy. Instead, most of those two years were spent trying to pass the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
That law is not going to help improve the economy, especially when our elected representatives have no idea what’s in it.
“We have to pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it,” former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said of the ACA.
If our lawmakers have no idea what’s in a piece of proposed legislation, it should never be passed.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 presented another opportunity Obama had to mend the void in the economy. According to an article by USA Today, the bill was intended to increase employment by 3.6 million by the fourth quarter of 2010. The problem here is, you can’t just take $787 billion, force-feed it into the economy and make everything all hunky-dory.
$787 billion doesn’t just magically appear out of thin air. It has to come from somewhere. That somewhere is either through taxes or borrowing. Picture the economy as a pie, with various slices comprising it. All this law accomplished was re-distributing how large those slices are, which failed to address the underlying problem.
The government spends exceedingly more than it takes in.
Romney, on the other hand, knows and understands how the economy works. According to FactCheck.org, job creation in Massachusetts rose to 28th in the nation during his final year in office. He also vetoed a measure that prevented Mass. from doing business with a state contractor who was re-locating customer service call centers to India.
Still, for those of you on the fence between Obama and Romney, this nation looks royally screwed. However, compared to Obama, Romney represents the lesser of the two evils in this election.
No, Romney’s not the ideal Republican candidate, but Obama has little to no knowledge of how economics work, nor does he seem to understand blaming his predecessor four years after he left office clearly displays his lack of leadership.
There is no guarantee Romney will improve economic conditions, as the future is uncertain, but four more years of Obama and America might not exist after them. Our country has fallen to a sickening standstill. Remember the proposal Obama made back in 2009 if he couldn’t turn around the economy?
“If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.”
Let’s hold him to that.
Contact David Hurtado, features editor, at dhurtado@jccc.edu.
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