President Obama entered office on January 20th 2009 as a man with a plan. He declared that his primary goals were the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, socializing healthcare and energy and global warming. He also mentioned his intentions to closely review every single executive order by President Bush and consider overturning them.
These goals, as reported by the Chicago Tribune, were indeed the first issues he addressed. However, The Beacon believes that there was a much more important issue that should have been at the forefront of President Obama’s attention.
While Obama was busy pouring over the executive orders issued by the Bush Administration, the United States economy was falling apart. Instead of fighting congress to pass a highly controversial healthcare bill, he should have attempted to come up with a legitimate solution that would put the economy on the path to recovery and increase available jobs so the soldiers he was trying to bring home would be able to find work when they returned.
According to CNN, the U.S. economy has been in recession since December 2007. Since Obama took office in 2009 that means that he had over a year to consider a plan to salvage the economy. Needless to say the economy is still in a recession and this will not bode well for Obama in the upcoming election year. An organized and properly executed response would have been much more beneficial to the country than quarreling with military leaders over “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
As President of the United States, Obama has the most responsibility of any man in the world. This means that he must put the wants and needs of everyone else in America in front of his own. While fighting for the right of openly homosexual citizens to join the military is a valiant cause, it is less significant when compared to the economic disaster sweeping across the country.
Priorities must be determined and effort must be redirected to those issues which have the most urgency and may have the most devastating effects on the largest number of American citizens. In his persistence to achieve the goals and promises he described in his campaign, Obama showed staunch determination and incessant vigor and he attempted the push his way through red tape.
The Beacon believes that had he devoted some more of this time and effort to slowing the rapid descent of the economy there might at least be a stable base for the economy to rebuild. When confronted by the debt ceiling issue Obama released a vague and utterly ineffective proposal that very few actually considered a serious option.
As president, it is part of his job to make sacrifices in order to better serve the people. The Beacon thinks, that had he not been so concerned with pushing his own agenda, President Obama would have helped to develop much more effective and long term measures.