![]() ![]() Five years after its passage, the White House estimated that the stimulus added six million jobs, and avoided a “double-dip” recession. Many Democrats wanted a much larger stimulus, but conservatives argued that any deficit spending would only worsen long-term economic security, and a $787 billion package passed with only three Republican votes in the Senate and zero Republican votes in the House. It launched Race to the Top, the most ambitious national education reform in decades.” It improved more than 110,000 miles of broadband infrastructure. Michael Grunwald of Time magazine writes that the stimulus also “jump-started clean energy in America, financing unprecedented investments in wind, solar, geothermal and other renewable sources of electricity. He proposed new federal spending on infrastructure and health programs, as well as an expansion of unemployment benefits and funds for other social welfare programs. ![]() Obama’s first order of business was to deal with the economic crash of 2008, and he did it by reaffirming Keynesian economics and turning away from the “government is the problem” mantra made popular by President Ronald Reagan. The Republican Party can still rouse its base by calling for Obamacare’s complete repeal, but with each year it becomes more unlikely that a president of either party will do anything to yank coverage from the newly insured.Ģ. Still, by many measures the law has been a success, with 20 million more Americans now insured, the uninsured rate dropping from 20 percent to about 12 percent and a lower rate of health care cost inflation than in recent decades. Obamacare also prohibits insurance plans that charge women higher premiums, and it requires that mental health be covered as comprehensively as physical conditions.Ī poll by National Public Radio this February found that perceptions of the law are mixed, with only 35 percent saying it has directly helped the people of their state and 27 percent saying it has hurt people. ![]() Health insurance is now mandatory for all citizens, part of a grand bargain that prohibits insurance companies from denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing conditions and that subsidizes premiums for those who cannot afford them. cemented several new principles in American health care. Perhaps the most important law of the past half-century, the A.C.A. Here are some of the ways in which President Obama has steered an ocean liner-assuming the United States has a fleet of them-by at least a few degrees.ġ. Obama himself, in a 2015 interview with Marc Maron, host of the podcast “WTF With Marc Maron,” said, “Sometimes the task of the government is to make incremental improvements or try to steer the ocean liner two degrees north or south so that 10 years from now, we’re in a very different place than we were.” He sympathized with those hoping for more sweeping changes during his administration but said, “you can’t turn 50 degrees.” The 44th president had an unusually ambitious agenda upon taking office, but economic and political realities forced him to put aside some goals and compromise on others. With less than nine months left in his term, President Obama must be thinking about how his presidency will be assessed by history. ![]()
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