Alexandria

Broken promises take a large spot in the defining characteristics of the Obama administration. The GOP has a list of the top 10 broken promises.

1. Serious About Reducing The Deficit And Debt
2. If You Like Your Plan, You Can Keep It
3. The Stimulus Will Keep Unemployment Below 8 Percent
4. Health Care Negotiations Will Be Televised
5. Lobbyists “Won?t Find A Job In My White House”
6. ObamaCare Will Reduce Premiums
7. The Stimulus Will Create “Shovel-Ready Jobs”
8. Housing Plan Will Save Millions From Foreclosure
9. Stimulus Jobs Will Not Be Shipped Overseas
10. Transparency

Big deal. What do you expect from the GOP? Let’s look else where. Transparency holds a high position in my list of qualities I desire in government. Of 14 promises they evaluated on July 16, Politifact finds four of these promises kept, five compromised and five broken. Pretty much a toss up. No president keeps all his promises. Often they lack the power to make changes necessary to keep all the promises they make. (You might wonder why they make promises they can’t keep, but the answer is obvious, votes.)

PolitiFact states that one of the kept promises involves “a website that combines one-stop-shopping for information on White House visitor records,…” One wonders if the Obama White House truly lives up to this promise given that they arrange meetings off site to avoid having names of who he was meeting with show up on official White House visitor logs.

Cutting the deficit in half by the end of his first term stands as another promise.

The 2013 budget the president submitted today does not come close to meeting this promise of being reduced to $650 billion for fiscal year 2013.

The president noted in that 2009 speech the Obama administration inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit.

The deficit was similarly $1.3 trillion in 2011, is projected to be $1.15 trillion in 2012, and the president’s budget claims it will be $901 billion in 2013.

On jobs and employment, Obama leaves one of the biggest broken promises.

As a candidate, Obama promised to create five million new energy jobs alone, claimed that by the end of his first term his health care plan would “bring down premiums by $2,500 for the typical family,” and guaranteed that his financial rescue plan would help “stop foreclosures.” As president-elect, Obama informed us that he had asked two of his top economic advisers, Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein, to conduct a “rigorous analysis” of his economic recovery plan. The report that he released predicted unemployment would not rise above 8 percent if the stimulus plan was passed. And in the first year of his presidency, Obama pledged to “cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office,” “lift two million Americans from poverty,” and “jolt our economy back to life.”

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Here’s the problem: If you go back and examine the record, you’ll find that Obama was fully aware of the depth and severity of the recession. As a candidate, for example, he said we were facing “the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.” As president-elect, Obama said we faced “a crisis unlike any we have seen in our lifetime.”

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In other words, Barack Obama knew full well how bad things were when he promised he’d cut the deficit in half, when his economic team said that if his stimulus package passed, unemployment would not rise above 8 percent, and much of the rest.

What this means, then, is that Barack Obama’s only excuse for his failures is a myth and a mirage — a manufactured, after-the-fact effort to escape accountability for his own words, his own commitments, and his own failings.

The “We Couldn’t Possibly Have Known How Bad It Was” narrative is an understandable one for Obama to resort to. But like so much of what the president says these days, it’s simply make-believe. The president has run out of excuses, which explains why for many Americans he’s just about run out of time.

For more broken promises, check out The Obameter at PolitiFact. Four pages of broken promises, 20 per page. Some I’m glad he broke, some others will be glad he broke, some we’ll all be unhappy he broke. Whether you agree or disagree with the promises he made and broke, one things if for sure: he plays fast and loose with what he says and is not a man of his word.