Who Has My Vote?

     It’s that time of year again, well at least for the next four years, the presidential elections. Between the squabbling among the various political parties it seems like only one thing unites them: the goal of winning the election. But this blog is about which candidate has my vote and I am proud to say that my vote this November will be for the man that promised to bring change to America, the current President Barrack Obama.

     Before talking about what Obama has done and the state of the country currently I think it is important to examine the country in 2008 when Obama took over office. In the last quarter of 2008 there was a drop in growth of the economy by nearly 9 percent. At the time that was my most serious drop in the economy since the 1930s depression era. As far as the job market, it was estimated that the country was losing 750,000 jobs a month in 2008. Many people thought that there could be a catastrophic global collapse that could cause the next "great depression".

     As soon as Obama took office he sprang into action. Obama began by bailing out the banks, which was started by former President Bush. He also pushed to bail out the auto industry and pass an almost $800 billion stimulus bill to help jump start the economy. As a result it could be argued that the economic collapse bottomed-out in 2010 and ever since the economy has been slowly growing. To back this claim up with stats, it was estimated that in 2011 a total of 1.9 million jobs were created. Now before my conservative friends start to claim that they were probably all government jobs and its not a valid statistic pay attention, over 250,000 government jobs were cut. Experts state that government employment under Obama for his first three years declined by 2.6 percent, which is higher than when Reagan was in office.

  

     From this information I would argue that, although the stimulus didn't make our economy "normal", it was still successful because it helped end the spiral downwards and has proved to create jobs. In relation to the economy, the topic of taxes is always a hot topic among the public. The right side would like you to believe that Obama is a crazy liberal that has made it his goal to raise your taxes but that just isn't the case. The reality is that Obama chose to continue the Bush tax cuts and devoted one-third of the stimulus budget to tax cuts.

     I think it is only fitting that I end this blog post with arguably the currently most controversial topic of that many people like to call "Obamacare." The U.S. Census Bureau reported in 2006 that 47 million Americans are uninsured. Since then the number has only increased, with many thinking the number is now over 50 million. For the rest of the blog I will refer to Obamacare by its appropriate name of Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). The PPACA will end the problem of having such a ridiculously high number of uninsured Americans. The Congressional Budget office estimates that this will reduce the federal deficit. This makes sense if you think about it. Who pays individuals medical bills when they don't have insurance? The answer is the government and all of the citizens because we pay taxes to fund the government. It is also not as left-leaning as people think because there is no public option which means it’s not socializing medicine. However, the current American systems of Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and public schooling are all socialist in nature already, but that's for a topic on another day.

     Obama isn't perfect, no president, or anyone person is. But he has done a better job than most people realize or will admit. Come this November I will vote for Obama because he has given me hope, when four years ago it seemed like there was none.

by YourLocalSecurity.com