What did President Obama say he wanted to do when he was first elected as president?

Answer 1

Energy/fossil fuels: President Obama listed several important goals related to cleaner fuels, improved pollution, and lower energy costs. He explained America's need for energy conservation and alternative energy. Barack Obama supported a 10 year plan to eliminate America's addiction to foreign oil by building alternative fuel industries using windmills, solar cells, hydro power and other sources besides burning fuels to generate electricity. This will take years to implement, but in the long term we will be independent from foreign oil suppliers that have America under their control.

Jobs/Improved foreign relations: In addition, such a large program would create tens or hundreds of thousands of new jobs for Americans such as R&D jobs, engineering jobs, manufacturing jobs, etc. putting more Americans into higher paying jobs and especially jobs making things. America's saved auto manufacturers have already begun building the first of the new breed of electric cars such as the Volt. Imagine plugging your car into a regular electric outlet to recharge the batteries instead of going to the gas station (which is also supporting unstable foreign countries when we purchase fossil fuels from overseas)! He envisioned our living in a country where more people have good paying jobs to raise everybody's living standard.

Environmental issues/Global Warming/health: The President wanted citizens to benefit from the elimination of burning fossil fuels through the air quality improvement allowing us to breathe cleaner air and no longer live in a country dependent on unstable and Anti-American countries for our energy.

Affordable Health Care: He planned and enabled the passage of a bill to improve the availability of affordable health care for all citizens.

Economy: Another giant effort he had to undertake was to improve and stop the rapid decline of the US economy, fraud in the banking industry, and other Wall Street issues and crimes. This, by extension, would also help improve the world economy. Ever since Ronald Reagan took office, the Republican economic policies have been aimed toward cutting taxes on the upper income recipients and to Borrow-and-Spend. This has been called "Trickle Down Economics". Unlike the Democrats' Tax-and-Spend policy of going to the taxpayers and telling the taxpayers why the government needed more money, the Republican Party policy has been to go to our Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Venezuelan, and other foreign financiers and borrow the money to spend. Some people equate that to a Republican economic policy to just hope that they are out of office before the bills must be paid.

The American debt incurred by Republican administrations since Ronald Reagan's time, is over $10 Trillion dollars. That is more than $33,000.00 owed by every single man, woman, and child in America to our foreign financiers.

The only balanced budget (i.e. America lives within its means) since Ronald Reagan took office in 1980 was under Democratic President Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton's Administration was paying off the bills to foreign financiers that had been run up by Ronald Reagan's and the first President Bush's presidencies.

The Second President Bush (George W. Bush) inherited a balanced budget with a $128 billion surplus to pay towards America's debts to foreign financiers. After inheriting the balanced budget and surplus) from Democratic President Bill Clinton, George W. Bush increased America's debt from $5 Trillion to almost $11 Trillion. Leaving a huge debt again for the following administration (President Obama's). Barack Obama wanted to break this cycle and end the tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans to once again pay their fair share. Trickle down is proven to be an invalid economic plan providing only benefit to the extremely rich citizens.

President Bush lowered taxes on the richest Americans which meant that without the usual amount of tax revenue coming in while the Bush administration was still spending, the government had to borrow more foreign money just to run the government.

End wars and improve global relations: Barack Obama promised to end the war in Iraq. This has now been accomplished. Costs for combat operations in Iraq were $10.3 billion per month in fiscal year 2007, Over $1 Trillion per year can be eliminated from America's spending simply by ending the war in Iraq. Eliminating this cost alone would provide the majority of savings needed to allow Democrat Barack Obama to return the US Government to a balanced budget.

For a list of the many accomplished goals of the Obama Presidency, see the related question below about what he has done right in contributors' opinions.

Answer 2

Barack Obama made a number of promises as a candidate; some of them, he has kept, and others have not yet been fulfilled. He has said he wants to improve the country's economy and make its educational system better; correct the mistakes he believes the Bush administration made; improve America's standing in the eyes of the world; and defeat America's biggest enemies (he pledged to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, for example). He also said he wanted to end the U.S. involvement in Iraq, and bring both political parties together so that congress would work more effectively.

Answer 3

One of the very first things was that he signed the Lily Ledbetter Act for fair pay which requires equal pay for equal work from employers for women when compared to the pay to men in order to stop the current sexual discrimination in pay. It will take time before this is obvious in the purse. Unfortunately, the current average pay discrepancy between the genders is still that women are paid 77 cents for each $1 a man is paid for the same work at the same job. Thankfully, President Obama gets it.

Answer 4

He said he was going to lower taxes for middle class families, get everyone free healthcareand that he was going to end the war in Iraq.

Answer 5

Freedom