Obama's Legacy:
From Factcheck.org:
1. Debt – The federal debt
has more than doubled under Obama. As of
Oct. 4, the U.S. government’s debt
owed to the public was well over $14 trillion, an increase of nearly
125 percent since Obama first took office.
The debt also has grown dramatically even when measured as a percentage
of the growing economy, from 52 percent of gross
domestic product at the end of fiscal year 2009 to an estimated 76.6
percent as of the end of fiscal year 2016 on Sept. 30, according to the most recent estimate,
published Aug. 23, by
the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
2. Total debt, counting
money the government owes to itself, currently stands at nearly $18.2 trillion,
up 71 percent under Obama.
3. The home ownership rate
slipped again since our last report, to the lowest point in over half a century. In the second quarter of 2016, 62.9 percent of households owned their own home,
according to the latest Census Bureau figures. That ties the lowest point
since the Census Bureau began collecting the figures. The last time the rate
was this low was in the third quarter of 1965.
The home ownership rate began to slide even before Obama took office. It
peaked at 69.2 percent in the second quarter of 2004. But most of the decline since then has
occurred under Obama. The most recent rate is 4.6 percentage points lower than
in the quarter just before Obama first entered the White House.
4. Labor Participation
Rate — Meanwhile the labor force participation rate ticked up to
62.8 percent in September. That rate,
which is the portion of the entire civilian population age 16 and
older that is either employed or currently looking for work,
is now 2.8 percentage points lower than when Obama took office.
5. Food Aid - As of July,
the most recent month on record, nearly 43.4 million Americans were still
receiving the food aid, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program. That’s down by 9.3 percent from
the record level set in December 2012, but it is still 35.6 percent higher than
it was when Obama took office in 2009.
6. Crime - The number of
murders in the U.S. jumped up nearly 11 percent last year, the worst such
one-year spike since 1990. No one is sure why; there are competing
theories. A further 13 percent increase
in the murder rate is projected for 2016 in a preliminary analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice
at the New York University School of Law. That’s based on police reports for
roughly the first half of the year, collected from the 30 largest U.S. cities.
About half the predicted increase is attributed to Chicago, which alone has
seen more than 500 murders so far
this year.
7. Not only has Obama
failed to persuade Congress to reinstate the “assault weapon” ban that expired
in 2004, as he proposed during his 2008 campaign, his tenure has been marked by
a remarkable increase in the production and sale of handguns. Government figures released at the end of
August show annual U.S. production of pistols and revolvers totaled nearly 4.3 million last year. That’s an increase of
134 percent over the figure for 2008. And the figures from
the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives show that 96
percent of those handguns produced in 2015 were not exported, but presumably
sold in the United States.
