Obama’s failed promises
Jobs
Obama promise: “If we create a new energy economy, we can create five million new jobs, easily, here in the United States.”
Obama reality: U.S. economy has lost 261,000 jobs since Obama became president.
Spending
Obama promise: “Actually I’m cutting more than I’m spending so that it will be a net spending cut.”
Obama reality: Federal spending is up 27 percent since Obama became president and will be up 40 percent by 2016 if he is reelected.
Cutting the deficit in half
"Today, I'm pledging to cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office." --Obama, Feb. 23, 2009
When Obama took office, the Congressional Budget Office projected a deficit of $1.2 trillion that year. He made his cut-in-half pledge just six days after signing a $787 billion stimulus bill that boosted the deficit even further. In fact, the promise was in some part a sop to conservative Democrats who voted for the stimulus but were nervous that the country could be headed to budgetary oblivion.
"There's no question the president made the promise and did not deliver on his promise," former Comptroller General David Walker said
Health Care
Obama promise: “In an Obama administration, we’ll lower premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year.”
Obama reality: Health insurance premiums have gone up by $2,370 for the typical family.
Close Guantanamo Bay:
"Guantanamo will be closed no later than one year from now."--Obama, Jan. 22, 2009
Obama's failure to close the war-on-terror detention facility at Guantanamo Bay may be the most glaring broken promise of all -- one he made repeatedly during the campaign, doubled down on as president and then was simply unable to deliver.
Shutting the prison was a staple of candidate Obama's stump speech in 2008. He saw the pledge as a dramatic way to break with President George W. Bush's handling of the war on terror. Obama staged an Oval Office ceremony on his second full day in office to sign an executive order setting the closure in motion.
More than three-and-a-half years later, Gitmo is still open and there's no prospect of closing it anytime soon.
Immigration reform
"What I can guarantee is that we will have in the first year an immigration bill that I strongly support and that I'm promoting. And I want to move that forward as quickly as possible." --Obama, May 28, 2008
Reining in home foreclosures
"We will help between 7 and 9 million families restructure or refinance their mortgages so they can ... avoid foreclosure." --Obama, Feb. 18, 2009
The wave of home foreclosures that helped launch the economic crisis has proven to be one of the most difficult challenges for Obama -- and one in which his team's actions have fallen far short of their goals.
Even as economic growth resumed, modest job growth returned and the stock market dramatically rebounded, the number of homes in or near foreclosure remained so large for most of Obama's term that it depressed housing prices and crushed the new housing industry.
The number of homes in the so-called "shadow inventory" -- homes in foreclosure or with delinquent mortgages -- rose steadily through Obama's first year in office, to nearly 9 million in early 2010, according to a Morgan Stanley study. The backlog has since dropped by about a third.
Obama set public goals of reworking 3 million to 4 million loans and refinancing another 4 million to 5 million, said Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi. "In all likelihood, they'll fall short. A little over a million modifications will stick and our target [estimate] is 3-4 million trial modifications. They've changed the goalposts there, so they may be able to hit it. ... Where they really fell short is on preventing foreclosures," Zandi said.
