Obama's first term: By the numbers

President Barack Obama signs S.3261, Contract Awards for Large Air Tankers, in the Oval Office of the White House June 13, 2012 in Washington, D.C. / Martin H. Simon-Pool / Getty Images

As President Obama's first term nears an end, the numbers reflect a chief executive who cast few vetoes, was tightfisted with pardons, granted hundreds of interviews, spent over a year on the road and is an avid golfer.

Other numbers show that the economy recovered from its recession on his watch but annual federal deficits topped a trillion dollars four years running, the National Debt soared. Unemployment had its ups and downs as did the stock market and economic growth markers during the course of an upward trend.

By no means do these numbers tell the whole story of a four-year term in office, but they serve as snapshots and provide on-the-fly insight into the priorities, problems, policies and pastimes of a presidency.

Economic indicators

Other numbers from the Obama presidency

[bobw101]

RollotheNorman replies:

Clearly I was addressing your clear and emphatic statement that the retired were not counted in the labor force. It turns out the criteria for labor force is simply anyone over 16 (this may be a bit unrealistic, a hangover from 3 generations ago) who is not presently in an institution. Clearly BLS does not at any point subtract people that retire from the labor force. You are confusing the statistic criteria with what actually exists.

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You are correct, I was wrong about retirement age people no being included.

[peter_out]

Obama promised the "public option". He never had the skill or fortitutde to keep such a promise, but that is beside the point.

We end up not only with no "public option", we now have triple cost of healthcare, only half of healthcare access we enjoyed even 5 years ago, and are forced to write quadruple healthcare premium checks to health insurance companies who are laughing all the way to the bank about Obamacare.

Half of employers will drop employee healthcare plans because they are too expensive, and pay the fine. Their employees nonetheless will be required to buy healthcare insurance, and this means millions of people are in for a huge surprise. HUGE.

This week some hospitals have stopped delivering babies.

Specialists are exiting many states and moving to Texas where government has capped liability insurance premiums. Hey, if your baby is due travel to Texas where you can still get healthcare.

Many states have rejected the idea to set up their own exchanges. Obama has no backup plan, and has no funding to operate exchanges out of Washinton.

CBO doubled, and then doubled again, their 2009 estimate of the cost of Obamacare.

[bobw101]

RollotheNorman replies:
bobw101 replies:

"Didn't vote for Romney and voted against every incumbent on the ballot."

Ah, so you finally come up with the truth, you did vote for Johnson. Now if we can just get you to quite trying to pass for a CONservative. Liberloons aren't CONservative you know. They're anarchists.

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No, didn't vote for Johnson, however he certainly couldn't do any worse than either of the chosen 2. Yes I do lean libertarian but certainly not to the point of anarchism.

I believe everyone should be free to do as they choose, so long as they don't hurt or infringe upon the Liberty/freedom of others.

Associations, trade, contracts, ect... should be peaceful, voluntary, and honest. It is never acceptable to use physical force to achieve ones goals. The only time force is acceptable is when you are defending against force. This is called the non-aggression principle.

I have no idea why this seems crazy to people. We teach our children not to cheat, steal, bully and generally to treat others as we would have them to treat us. This is the non-aggression principle.

I believe the government should be held to the same standards.

Pretty crazy huh? If you want to mock and ridicule me for that, well that's your choice.

[bobw101]

RollotheNorman replies:

Nope you are the greasy right wing liar here Bob-O.
I posted the criteria and formula for calculating labor force participation. If you want to be willfully ignorant, there's not much can be done about that. You might want to visit Red States, there's a regular crew of the willfully ignorant over there.

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Baby boomer retirement is a factor but certainly not the driving factor for the record low labor participation rates. Labor participation rates have dropped dramatically for people in their prime working years. Also while young and middle aged have been getting out of the labor force, older Americans have been getting back in. Another factor is approximately 1.5 million potential workers are on disability now as compared to 2007. From the research I have done 3 factors are driving the low participation rate:

1. Stopped looking for work.
2. Retired.
3. Back to school full time.

If a person wants a job and keeps looking, that person is unemployed. Retirement may voluntary or involuntary. For example, maybe someone wants a job but retires when his unemployment benefits have been used, and it's either start collecting social security or be homeless. Exploding student loan debt suggests many are either just staying in school or going back to school because of the employment situation.

[dlatkinson1]

Mark, you're a man of my own bent. That is, I like to keep track of our family finances in much the same way that you track goings on in the White House. All these numbers are interesting, but how do they stack up with past 4-year presidential terms? You must've been doing this for quite awhile; I'd be interested in seeing a comparison.

[darkhorseky]

It does not matter about the past. So where did the leadership say where we are going? With new laws and policies the housing market has been tighten up and will stay that way. No one really will want to crash anymore banks. The trillions of dollars we owe will have to be paid and pay day is this year. As for the no ideal of taxes , get real . Federal goverment say no new taxes. Local goverments will riase taxes ask California lolol raised taxes on the rich and everone else. Now they are losing thousands of people leaving the state. Now no new taxes from any of thier money. The stock market that black hole doen't tell the tell that billions each year are put in by reirement funds. Not the fact the companies are making huge profits. The money is getting less usless each much ( cant buy as much) because of the Fed over printing money before the last election. So anyway He may have won. But we will pay. Sooner or later all of us will have to pay.

[bobw101]

RepubliCon_Liar_RobMe replies:

LMAO!....BOBW101....as someone tried to teach your shallow brain earlier (in another useless attempt)...

"Laborforce participation is down because people are retiring droves because the biggest cohort in US history - the Boomers - are aging out of the labor market. Sheesh, you right wing ret--d heads are sure in a fog when it comes to economics and demographics."

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Hey moron, if you are of retirement age you aren't counted in the participation rate, it's only working age people.

[bobw101]

iam4honesty replies:

LOL

Sounds like you are an apologist for terrorists who want to destroy America, depending on where they were born. Plus, you agree with the majority that George W. Bush was a disaster for America.
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Please, if Obama was a white man with an R behind his name you people would be calling him fascist, Hitler, murderer, ect... Which is what the left called Bushy while he was in office and so did I. Now that Obama is in office doing all the same things and worse, suddenly it's ok. HYPOCRISY!!!

[EW81]

NEINCENSORSHIP replies:

Thank God we have a President who has the courage to lead the recovery from the George WMD Bush economic crash, with Boner, Can'tor, and Lyin Ryan, chewing at his ankles the entire time.
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You're delusional if you believe that. President Obama's government closely resembles the Occult. He has no regard for the constitution attacking guns, adding $6 trillion dollars worth of debt in just 4 years (As much as you'd like that's not Bush's fault), and championing the patriot act. If you think President Obama is any different from President Bush you're not paying attention.

Every time you point the finger at the conservatives just remember there are 4 pointing back at you. At Least when Bush and Clinton were President you could see the money working. With President Obama it's like throwing money in a black hole. No pun intended.

[bobw101]

10. Obama promised to close Guantanamo Bay. Four years later, Guantanamo is still open, its military tribunals have resumed. The Obama Administration recently imposed new arbitrary rules on Guantanamo prisoners who already lost their first habeas corpus challenge. The new rules eliminate the right for a lawyer to visit their clients at the facility.

11. Obama's promised transparency in his 2008 campaign. Once elected, things changed and he invoked the state secret clause on numerous occasions. Bloomberg reported that upon their FOIA requests for cabinet-level agency travel information, 19 of 20 agencies broke the law and failed to supply the requested information.

12. In the 2008 campaign Obama promised tougher rules on lobbyists and their revolving door policies. Once elected Obama promptly loaded up his administration with many former lobbyists. Obama nominated former Raytheon lobbyist William J. Lynn for deputy defense secretary, waiving the new rules for Lynn. Raytheon is one of the largest defense contractors and weapons producers in the United States. Obama also received campaign contributions from lobbyists through the use of SuperPACs and, on at least two occasions, has received money directly from lobbying agencies; two checks at $50,000 each. The New York Times reported Obama received at least $5 million from lobbyist bundler's, including $500,000 from an executive at the drug-maker Pfizer, and a $500,000 donation from a top Comcast lobbyist.

13. Since Obama took office, warrantless wiretapping of Americans' domestic communications has skyrocketed. According to the ACLU, "more people were subjected to [electronic] surveillance in the past two years than in the entire previous decade."

14. Obama authorized a $60 billion sale of arms to the Saudi Arabian dictatorship, the largest arms deal in history.

15. The Fast and Furious scandal, An estimated 300 Mexican citizens and a U.S. Border patrol have been killed with Fast and Furious weapons that the Obama administration allowed to be trafficked into Mexico. When asked about the operation on a Univision 2012 campaign appearance Obama lied and said "I think it's important for us to understand that the Fast and Furious program was a field-initiated program begun under the previous administration..." In actuality, the Fast and Furious program was started in October 2009, nine months into the Obama presidency.

16 Obama broke his pledge to allow five days of public comment before signing bills, repeatedly.

17. Obama broke his pledge to broadcast health care negotiations on C-SPAN.

18. The Solyndra scandal, the Obama administration guaranteed loans for $535 million for the solar company. When the company went into bankruptcy one of the original investors Oklahoma billionaire George Kaiser, who was also a major contributor to Obama's 2008 campaign was given priority over other creditors and the government for his stake in Solyndra.

[bobw101]

Didn't vote for Romney and voted against every incumbent on the ballot.

[EW81]

Well put BOBW101. It figures that the liberals would attack you for using facts. Facts hurt their brain. They're too busy conducting business based on emotion to let facts get in the way.

[EW81]

This is exactly whats wrong with America. You have the people on the right who blindly follow the Republicans, and the people on the left who blindly follow the Democrats. Over the last two decades we have had the worst leadership in our country's history. Claiming that President Obama's first term was a success is a joke. He spent $6 trillion dollars just to maintain status quo. What happens when interest rates go back up? What happens when there's no more money for the free loaders? What then.

[EW81]

Why is it when something goes wrong the liberals blame Bush? Bush didn't spend $6 trillion dollars in 4 years, and I don't see Obama rushing to get rid of unconstitutional policies like the Patriot act and TSA check points. It seems like President Obama is more concerned about his basketball bracket than he is about the well being of hard working Americans.

[sickovitall]

Air Force One was used 836 times! At $180,000 an hour, that's a minimum of $150,480,000 (if each trip was only for one hour), and 2.2 years (once a day) spent. I hope it was worth it.