Obama's presidency has been successful so far

Success is not achieved by blaming others for failure Pro claims that “the Republican Party is “the true cause of the lack of progress and bipartisanship throughout all forms of government.” Blaming the Republicans for Obama failures does not support the resolution that President Obama has been a success. Successful presidents like Reagan and Clinton convince opponents to compromise. Reagan had a Democrat Congress and achieved Social Security reform and immigration reform. Clinton worked with Gingrich and the Republican Congress to pass balanced budgets and landmark welfare reform. Obama has no bipartisan successes. Even though blaming Republicans is an excuse for failure and not a claim of success, I'll address Pro's claims. The discussion sheds light on President Obama's promise of transparency. He was going to shepherd a new era of open debate, and certainly no Republican forced him to suppress Congressional debate, craft secret deals, and abandon regular order in legislating. From May through October in 2009, Republicans asked every month for President Obama to meet with them to work out a compromise on health care, and every month President Obama refused to meet. [13. http://tinyurl.com...] The President finally arranged exactly one press event meeting with Congressional Republicans. The Republicans handed the President a copy of the Republican proposals on health care. The President had repeatedly stated that there were no Republican proposals. The Democrat leadership effectively prohibited Republican participation in hearings on Obamacare, with one exception. Despite leadership objections, Sen. Max Baucus allowed Republican participation in hearings in the Senate Finance Committee he chaired. Not many of the Republican modifications were adopted, but over the many weeks of debate some changes were accepted by the Democrats. Then all of the work of the committee was discarded in favor of a new bill introduced by Sen. Baucus and adopted under the gimmick of reconciliation. It was 2700 pages and Baucus himself said he never read it. [14. http://tinyurl.com...] The legislation was adopted without a single Republican supporter, and with 34 Democrats joining House Republicans to vote against it. Previous entitlement legislation, including President Bush's expansion of Medicare, were done with full hearings and bipartisan support. “For decades, a rule of thumb in Washington has said that there should be popular support and a bipartisan majority before approving an initiative that significantly affects tens of millions of Americans. Health-care reform—ObamaCare—has neither, yet Democrats want to impose it anyway.” [15. http://online.wsj.com...] During the White House budget negotiations last year, Boehner reached a compromise with Obama that would have provided substantial spending cuts in return for hundreds of billions in new taxes. The next day, President Obama sabotaged the deal by demanding over a trillion dollars in additional tax increases. The Washington Post published a long article [16. http://articles.washingtonpost.com...] verifying “Obama,...upped the ante in a way that made it more difficult for Boehner — already facing long odds — to sell it to his party. … The actions of Obama and his staff during that period in the summer reflect the grand ambitions and the shortcomings of the president’s first term.” President Obama has never gotten a budget approved by Congress, and this year was the first time he managed to get a budget through the Democrat controlled Senate. “Tired of watching as flailing leadership negotiations fail to produce any key legislation,” wrote The Washington Post, “senior lawmakers hope that a return to the old days of subcommittee hearings and bill markups, floor amendments and conference reports may offer a path forward on everything from immigration to a long-term budget plan.” [17. http://blog.heritage.org...] Republicans have supported Obama on many issues of national defense, including drone strikes, the surge in Afghanistan, and intervention in Libya. Republican support is not unanimous, but it comes in the face of opposition from the President's fellow Democrat's. Republicans voted for Obama's tax bill at the start of 2013. [18. http://www.nytimes.com...] The charge that Republicans reflexively vote against Obama is proved false by the serious attempts at compromise and the counter-examples of support on key issues. Obama has tried to cover up failures The Obama scandals are too many to detail, so I can only list a few. They may be incompetence or malfeasance, but there is no question that they are all failures. The “fast and furious” scandal was the government setting up sale of a thousand automatic weapons to drug cartels, then losing track of the weapons rather than using them to lead to the drug bosses. Attorney General Holder signed off on the errant plan, but claimed no knowledge of it. By a vote of 255-67, including 17 Democrats, Holder received a criminal contempt of Congress citation for failing to turn over documents relevant to the investigation. [19. http://tinyurl.com...] There is no executive privilege for investigations of this sort, but the stonewalling strategy will keep it in the Courts for years. The Benghazi scandal includes a failure to provide security for the diplomatic corps in Libya and the completely false attribution of the attack to a spontaneous demonstration against a video. The CIA knew immediately that it was an attack planned by terrorists, and Secretary Clinton was told the same night there was no demonstration. Obama inexcusable repeated the nonsense about a video long after it was known to be false. [20. http://tinyurl.com...] Starting in 2010, the Internal Revenue Service targeted Tea Party groups for harassment. From early 2010 to late 2012 thirty-two progressive groups were grant tax exempt status and only four Tea Party groups were given exemptions, despite there being many more Tea Party applications. A flurry of approvals began after the start of Congressional scrutiny. The Administration blamed two rogue agents in Cincinnati, but an IRS lawyer and the alleged “rogue agents” agents have testified under oath that orders came from Washington. [21. http://tinyurl.com...; 22. http://tinyurl.com... ] Obama does faithfully execute the law The oath of office requires the President to uphold all the laws, including the laws he doesn't like. Each exception is a failure to uphold the oath. We understand that as a practical matter, no all laws can be 100% enforced, so there is discretion in only prosecuting egregious violations. However, the President issues blanket nullification. The President decided to nullify immigration law and implement his version of the Dream Act by executive order. [23. http://tinyurl.com...] The blatant illegality offended many people who favored the Dream Act. The law requires Obama to suspend military aid to Egypt after the recent military coup. Rather than go to congress and seek an exemption, he chose to ignore the law and provide only a token withholding of aid. [24. http://tinyurl.com...] Intervention in Libya without Congressional approval was illegal. [25. http://dailycaller.com...] The President made recess appointments to the National labor Relations Board when the Senate was not in recess. The courts ruled that the appointments were illegal, but Obama continues to pretend they are valid. [26. http://tinyurl.com...] ---- Keep in mind that Pro challenged me personally to the debate. He shouldn't be surprised he ended up in a debate.