Obama's presidency has been successful so far

My opponent challenged me to this debate. It's good topic that deserves attention. Obamacare and Deficits are Obama failures Yesterday, President Obama touted [1. http://tinyurl.com...] how well Obamacare is working. He cited New York lowering health insurance rates by about 50% and some people getting rebate checks for about $136 from their health insurance carriers. But only two states, Vermont and New York, are projecting a decrease in health insurance rates while 45 states expect insurance rate to increase dramatically. [2. http://energycommerce.house.gov...] In California, where the legislature and executive are dominated by enthusiastic Democrats supporting Obamacare, rates on individual health insurance policies will rise 64-164%. [3. http://tinyurl.com...] In Washington State, also packed with Obamacare enthusiasts, individual rates will rise 34%-80%. [4. http://tinyurl.com...]Obamacare was sold with the claim that insurance rates would drop immediately. Since passage, annual rates have increased by over $2000. The $136 rebate is a one time deal swamped the ongoing increases. Democrat Sen. Max Baucus, who chaired the Senate hearing and supported the legislation called the implementation a “train wreck.” Unions, top financial backers of President Obama, have now condemned the plan. [5. http://tinyurl.com...] Union workers on the low end of the salary scale will lose wages as employers turn full time jobs into part time. The lavish health care plans enjoyed by high paid union workers will be subjected to a 40% tax. Obamacare is a failure because it raises compliance costs and diminishes competition. Compare it to income taxes, where the government collects $2700 billion in taxes, but another $400 billion is paid to accountants to figure out what is legal and what is not. Obamacare already has about 20,000 pages of regulations in place, but they are just getting started. Moreover, tax rules are a once-a-year event, but physicians and hospitals must check regulation everyday for every patient. My opponent attributes President Obama's deficit's to the bailouts and to wars started during the Bush Administration. The bank bailouts were passed during the Bush Administration, so the cost is charged to Bush. However, the Banks paid back about $400 billion during the Obama years, which offset Obama deficits. The wars cost about $150 billion per year, while Obama deficits have averaged about $1200 billion per year. President Obama claimed that 90%+ of the deficits were due to Bush polices. The Washington Post awarded that four Pinocchios as an extreme falsehood. [6. http://tinyurl.com...] Obama's failed recovery Obama said that if the Stimulus were passed the economy would bounce back. It was passed, and none of the claims were even close to being met. The chart below shows the predictions versus reality. [7. http://tinyurl.com...] Unemployment would now be 11.2% if people had not given up looking for jobs since Obama took office. Reagan inherited a financial crisis worse than the one Obama inherited. Under Reagan, the economy bounced back and the economy was generating 500,000 to 800,000 per month. Under Obama, the 150,000 month rate barely keeps up with new grads entering the labor force, so unemployment is stuck. Obama's Failure of transparency and bipartisanship Obama promised a new era in government. The debate on health care would be on C-SPAN and all legislation would be posted on the Internet before he signed it. He started making private deals on Obamacare almost immediately, including the famous kickbacks to Senators and a secret deal with drug makers. [8. http://tinyurl.com...] The legislation was passed in the middle of the night with literally no one having read it. The Baucus Committee in the Senate had some hearings, because Baucus defied leadership prohibitions on debate. Pelosi banned House hearings and debate. There has not been a more partisan Administration in memory. Bush passed the Medicare prescription drug plan and an education program with substantial support from Democrats. Obama simply decided not to fulfill his promises of bipartisanship, transparency, and open debate. Obama ran in 2008 as been opposed to gay marriage. He only changed his position when he needed additional left-wing support for the 2012 election. Obama has installed a Nanny State bureaucracy Obama has moved decision making out of the legislature and into the hands of faceless bureaucrats who are never held accountable. Obamacare is the obvious one, with health care decisions made by a federal bureaucracy. There are private insurers, physicians, and hospitals, but what they are allowed to do is determined by government rule makers even more thoroughly than if they were government employees. Government employees are rarely punished for failure to obey rules, but “private” individuals can be put in jail for not obeying. Dodd-Frank has put banking and finance under government control. Who gets a loan is now subject to Federal rules. A major cause of the economy failing to recover is that local banks cannot make loans to small businesses. It's illegal for banks to make a risky loan, but the specifics are undefined. The Americans with Disabilities Act controls many of the details of building construction on the sole initiative of bureaucrats. The bureaucrats decided door knobs are banned, so door knobs are banned. The Environmental Protection Agency has total authority over energy. The courts have upheld the authority of the EPA to control carbon dioxide, so if they want to require you to get a permit to exhale, theoretically they have the power to do so. Under Obama, the EPA required consumers to pay, through utility rates, $7 trillion over 90 years to prevent 0.00375 degree of global warming. [9. http://tinyurl.com...] That done without new taxes or legislation. The bureaucracies have far more power than they have exercised. The EPA under Obama is afraid the Democrats from oil states will join Republicans to moves to ban fossil fuels. In health care and banking, the bureaucracies are just inefficient in writing the tens of thousands of pages of new regulations they are empowered to enact. The bureaucracies will catch up and rule. Japan is a model for how this works. Japan has elected a new prime minister every year for many years, but each has proved powerless to substantially move the bureaucracy to new policies. [10. http://tinyurl.com...] The Japanese economy has been depressed for two decades. In California, Governor Jerry Brown banned discretionary travel, but large parts of the bureaucracy decided that obeying was not a good idea, so they didn't. [11. http://tinyurl.com...] That's a sign of things to come for the United States. Obama has put in place a bureaucratic replacement for representative government. Obama foreign policy has been a disaster A pundit summarizes it well: American prestige has diminished with “... the administration of Barack Obama and his promise to “embrace a new era of engagement” and a “new way forward” with America’s enemies. In practice this has meant his solicitous “outreach” to thug regimes like Iran and Syria, the appeasing and unreciprocated “reset” of relations with Russia, the Carter-like pledges that America would be a “partner mindful of his own imperfections,” the undercutting and hounding of stalwart allies like Israel, the craven apologies to the Muslim world for a “colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims,” and the abandonment of unsavory allies like Hosni Mubarak, who nonetheless better served America’s interests than the Muslim Brothers ...” [12. http://tinyurl.com...]--- From the viewpoint of the Left, Obama is a failure because his incompetence has given government control a bad name. From the right, bureaucratic control and a failed recovery are alone enough evidence of failure. He has brought extreme partisanship and secrecy that fails his promise.