Letter: Don't toss out nation's progress: Re-elect Obama

To the Editor:

Repeatedly during the campaign, we've heard Republicans charge that

President Barack Obama accomplished nothing even when backed by Democratic majorities in Congress.

This accusation is highly dishonest, since the Democrats had no filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate to move legislation beyond the Republican obstruction that has thwarted Obama's legislative agenda.

Add to that Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell¹s statement Oct. 23 that the GOP¹s top priority is making Obama a one-term president, and it’s obvious that Republicans have acted in bad faith.

Republican lawmakers have further sabotaged Obama by opposing any legislation he favored, legislation they often supported previously. A sterling example is the Affordable Care Act, based on ideas proposed and supported by Republicans, including Mitt Romney.

Under the circumstances, it’s amazing that Obama has enjoyed any legislative successes at all. Yet he has passed major health care reform, saved the auto industry, stood up for women’s rights and education, and, if economists are to be believed, prevented a depression many times worse than the recent recession.

Obama is an intelligent and decent man, who has been honest with the American public about the difficulties we face in digging out of the economic mess created by the Bush administration. He has leveled with us that recovery will be neither fast nor easy, and has appealed to our adult sense of responsibility to pull together in a bipartisan effort to restore America’s economic health.

Republicans would overthrow our hard-won recovery in favor of an unspecified plan guaranteed only to transfer more wealth from the rest of us into the pockets of the rich.

Let’s not throw away the progress we’ve already made toward recovery. Let’s give President Obama a second term and the Congress he needs to consolidate those gains for the American people.

Thomas Smith

River Falls

Tags: opinion, letters