In 2004, Barack Obama came onto the stage at the Democrat National Convention as the party’s candidate to represent Illinois in the U.S. Senate and wowed the country with his keynote address. Less than three years later, he was campaigning to be president of the United States with a lot of promises and a message of “hope and change.”
Though Obama remains a popular figure, the overwhelming majority believe that he has placed the country on the “wrong track.” Those who even remember his promises now know they were empty.
As we count down his final days at the White House, I’ve made a list of his most memorable broken promises or outright lies – one for each year he was in office:
- “If you like the (health care) plan you have, you can keep it. If you like the doctor you have, you can keep your doctor, too. The only change you’ll see are falling costs as our reforms take hold.”Obamacare is now despised by hard-working Americans who have lost their plans and their doctors and seen their health-care costs more than double.
- Health care isn’t the only thing that has doubled. Just check out the size of the national debt. Few remember that one of his most impressive campaign promises was that he would cut the nation’s debt, which was $10.8 trillion when he took office, in half by the end of his first term. Check it out.
- Another important promise made to the voters is that he would not raise taxes on the middle class. Although individual income tax rates have remained the same, taxes have been raise in many different and creative ways, and most of those taxes are borne by the middle class.
- Obama promised to make his administration the most transparent in history. In reality, it has been just the opposite, so much so that this has been the subject of ridicule by late night comedians.
- On Sept. 11, 2012, Ambassador Christopher Stephens and three other Americans were killed in an attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi. He was the first U.S. ambassador to be killed in the line of duty in 33 years. Stephens had expressed concerns about his safety in Libya – which went unheeded. The official word from Obama was that these deaths were the result of a spontaneous demonstration in protest of an anti-Islamic video posted on the Internet.We now know that it was a lie and that the administration knew from the start that it was planned and directed by Islamist radicals as an evil commemoration of 9/11. However, it simply didn’t fit with his 2012 campaign narrative that bin Laden was dead, al Qaida was defeated, and ISIS was a JV team.
- Also in 2012, Obama made his famous “red line” comment when asked about using our military in Syria for, at the least, “the safekeeping of the chemical weapons.”Obama said, “That’s an issue that doesn’t just concern Syria; it concerns our close allies in the region, including Israel. It concerns us. We cannot have a situation where chemical or biological weapons are falling into the hands of the wrong people. We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.”
- Jump ahead to 2016 and the Democratic National Convention in July. Obama claimed that he “shut down Iran’s nuclear weapons program.” The text of a secret document obtained by the Associated Press shows just the opposite. Key restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program will ease in slightly more than a decade, halving the time Tehran would need to build a bomb from a year to just six months. The agreement allows Iran to replace its 5,060 outdated centrifuges with up to 3,500 more advanced models that are five times more efficient. Scary stuff.
- The last broken promise came to light over the Christmas holiday when the U.S., which has veto power in the U.N. Security Council, allowed a dangerous resolution against Israel to pass by simply abstaining.On March 5, 2012, Obama said, “Our commitment to the security of Israel is rock solid. And as I’ve said to the prime minister in every single one of our meetings, the United States will always have Israel’s back when it comes to Israel’s security.”
Media wishing to interview Jane Chastain, please contact [email protected].
|
