Recalling Obama's Commitment to Jobs - Approval Rating Falls Again

Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: Obama’s Commitment To Jobs I - Two studies were released this week on the economic impact of the Gulf oil spill. According to the research firm Moody’s, if the Deepwater Horizon leak remains contained, the Gulf states stand to lose $1.2 billion in economic output and as many as 17,000 jobs.

As bad as the oil spill has been for the fishing and tourism industries, Moody’s analysis concluded, “The potential for even greater economic damage to Louisiana’s economy stems from President Obama’s six-month moratorium on new offshore drilling.”

The second study, conducted by Dr. Joseph Mason of Louisiana State University, focused on the potential consequences of the Obama Administration’s drilling ban. According to Dr. Mason, if the drilling ban remains in effect, the Gulf states stand to lose $2.1 billion and 8,000 jobs. The “spill-over effects” could cost another 4,000 jobs nationally.

The oil spill is an economic and environmental disaster. But the administration’s actions – from its slow response to its ill-conceived drilling ban – have only compounded the tragedy by putting thousands of jobs at risk when the region can least afford it.

Obama’s Commitment To Jobs II - When Congress approved the creation of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), it also created the Office of the Special Inspector General (SIGTARP) to monitor how these funds were administered. A new audit from TARP’s Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky offers a scathing critique of the auto industry bailout and takeover. Barofsky even goes so far as to state that the Obama Administration’s actions led to unnecessary layoffs and contributed to higher unemployment. Consider this excerpt:

“At a time when the country was experiencing the worst economic downturn in generations and the government was asking its taxpayers to support a $787 billion stimulus package designed primarily to preserve jobs, Treasury made a series of decisions that may have substantially contributed to the accelerated shuttering of thousands of small businesses and thereby potentially adding tens of thousands of workers to the already lengthy unemployment rolls – all based on a theory and without sufficient consideration of the decisions’ broader economic impact.

“It is not at all clear that the greatly accelerated pace of the dealership closings during one of the most severe economic downturns in our Nation’s history was either necessary for the sake of the companies’ economic survival or prudent for the sake of the Nation’s economic recovery.”

You may recall that at the time there was some controversy over how GM and Chrysler decided which dealerships to shut down. It appeared as though political considerations, rather than purely financial issues, were involved in the decisions to terminate certain dealerships.

Inspector General Barofsky weighed in on “Dealergate” as well, writing, “Just as troubling, there was little or no documentation of the decision-making process to terminate or retain dealerships with similar profiles, making it impossible in many cases for SIGTARP to determine the causes of deviations from the supposedly objective criteria.”

As Michelle Malkin writes, Barofsky’s audit tells you “Everything you need to know about the nightmare of government-controlled businesses…” It’s a tale of “grisly incompetence, fatal bureaucratic hubris and Big Labor cronyism.” Just wait until this crowd starts running our health care too!

How Low Can He Go? - Quinnipiac University released a new poll today showing that Obama’s job approval rating has “dropped to a negative 44-to-48 percent, his worst net score ever.” One year ago, Obama’s rating was 57%-to-33%, “just before the political firestorm created by opposition to his health care plan galvanized political opponents and turned independent voters against him.” What about those independent voters? According to Quinnipiac’s findings, they now disapprove of Obama by a 14-point margin of 38%-to-52%.

- On specific issues, Obama’s ratings are down across the board in this latest poll of nearly 2,200 registered voters. Here are some key findings:
- On foreign policy, 46% disapprove and 43% approve.
- On his handling of the Gulf oil spill, 51% disapprove and 41% approve.
- On the economy, 56% disapprove of Obama’s performance, while just 39% approve.
- And on his handling of illegal immigration, 58% disapprove, while only 30% approve.

On immigration, Quinnipiac delved further, asking voters about the direction immigration reform should take and their views on Arizona’s new anti-illegal immigration law. The results were remarkable. Sixty-nine percent of voters want immigration reform to move in the direction of “stricter enforcement,” while just 22% want immigration reform to move in the direction of “integrating illegal immigrants into American society.” Those figures represent a seven-point swing toward stricter enforcement from Quinnipiac’s June poll.

On Arizona’s new law, 55% of voters support it, while 30% oppose it. By a 16-point margin, voters would support their state passing a similar law, and 60% of voters oppose the Obama Administration’s lawsuit against Arizona, while just 28% support it.

But wait…there’s more! For the first time, more Americans now think the country would be better off had John McCain won the 2008 election. And looking ahead to 2012, Quinnipiac notes that 48% of voters do not believe Obama deserves reelection, while just 40% do.    Obama won’t be on the ballot in 2010, but his socialist enablers in Congress will be. And there is good news on that front too. Quinnipiac found that registered voters now prefer Republican candidates by five points in the upcoming congressional elections.

Given the well-documented “enthusiasm gap” between liberal and conservative voters this year and the generally higher turnout among conservative voters in mid-term elections, many political analysts believe that a GOP lead in polls like this could translate into a Republican landslide on Election Day.  As optimistic as this sounds, I’m not taking anything for granted. The Democrats are desperate to maintain their stranglehold on power, and they have plans to spend more than $100 million to make sure their left-wing base turns out in November. We cannot afford to be lulled into a false sense of complacency. The stakes are simply too great.
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Gary Bauer is is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families. He submitted the above in an email to the ARRA News Service Editor. Bauer was a former Republican presidential candidate and served as President Ronald Reagan’s domestic policy adviser.

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