Sean Hannity: Obama farewell can't hide a disastrous legacy
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President Obama spent much of Tuesday’s farewell address boasting about his success, but the facts paint a much different picture. The truth is, he oversaw the precipitous decline of the American economy, rammed through a disastrous health care law and presided over a thoroughly failed foreign policy.
The last eight years have brought the lowest labor participation rates since the 1970s, with 95 million Americans out of the labor force. The so-called recovery has been the weakest one since the 1940s. We have the lowest home ownership rate in 51 years – despite mortgage rates artificially kept at record lows. Over 11 million more Americans are on food stamps since he became president and more than 43 million Americans now live in poverty. One of every six men between 18 and 34 are either in prison or out of work.
And by the time he leaves office, President Obama will have added more to our national debt that all the other presidents before him combined. When President Obama finally leaves office, the national debt will be almost $20 trillion. Prior to taking office, the man who has tacked on $9.3 trillion to what our children and grandchildren owe once said the then $9 trillion national debt was “unpatriotic.”
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Then, of course, there's President Obama's assault on the business community through his burdensome regulations. Consider this: The estimated cost of regulations under Obama is a staggering $873 billion. That includes a shocking $344 billion cost in Environmental Protection Agency regulations alone. All told, the number of new regulations that been finalized under President Obama checks in at almost 3,000.
When it comes to jobs, President Obama is always bragging about how many he's created, but facts are stubborn things. In the past eight years, America has lost more than 300,000 manufacturing jobs and, although the president doesn’t mention it, America had a global trade deficit of over $732 billion last year.
Yet another drag on the American economy is ObamaCare, his signature legislation and crowning achievement. Remember when Obama repeatedly told you that under his plan you could keep your doctor, you keep your plan and that that it would drive down overall health costs to the point the average family would save $2,500 a year? And how ObamaCare would actually reduce the deficit?
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“No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people,” Obama said on June 15, 2009. “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan, period.”
Well, millions of people lost their doctors and their insurance plans, but that was just the start of the ObamaCare disaster. This year, Affordable Care Act premiums are exploding by 25 percent on average. In Arizona, they're jumping by a stunning 116 percent. Deductibles are so high that even if ObamaCare recipients pay their premiums, they can’t afford to use their coverage in many cases.
As for the average American family saving $2,500 a year on health care, the exact opposite has happened. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the increase in health care costs for employer-sponsored benefits since 2008 is now $5,462. That is a 43 percent increase.
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It just keeps getting worse. Choice in health care providers available through ObamaCare is evaporating. In states like Alabama, Alaska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Wyoming, people buying on the exchanges have a single insurer to choose from. It’s because insurers are now pulling out after losing massive amounts of money. So much for choice.
So what about foreign policy? Obama gave Iran, the No. 1 state sponsor of terror, $150 billion and allows them to continue to spin their centrifuges? And of course, he paid a ransom for four U.S. citizens Iran held prisoner, reversing longstanding policy and signaling to the world that there’s money to be made from taking Americans captive.
Obama drew a “red line” when he warned Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad not to use chemical weapons. When Assad crossed it, Obama did nothing. Partly as a result, that country civil war continues and has created a massive worldwide humanitarian crisis.
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In Egypt, Obama he gave Mohammed Morsi, the former Muslim Brotherhood head who became president but is now in prison for murder, F-16s, tanks and $1.5 billion in taxpayer funds.
In Libya, the president helped overthrew Qaddafi, and that country has since fallen into chaos, creating a hotbed for ISIS.
And speaking of ISIS, back 2014, President Obama called the world’s most dangerous terrorist organization the”JayVee” team. The next year, just hours before the horrific ISIS attack in Paris that killed 130 people, Obama assured us that ISIS was “contained.” ISIS was never a junior varsity team, and certainly was not contained. In fact, it seized vast parts of Iraq because Obama created a vacuum when he pulled U.S. troops out too early for purely political reasons.
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There's no doubt President Obama's legacy is one of severe damage to the country. But the good news is that we’ll have a new president in 10 days in Donald Trump.
The president-elect has promised to clean up this mess and he has a very clear plan to do it. He will create millions of new jobs, lower taxes, reform the tax code, negotiate better and fairer trade deals, cut burdensome regulations, encourage multi-national corporations to bring back trillions of dollars, promote energy independence repeal and replace ObamaCare, build a border wall, vet refugees and appoint originalist justices to the U.S. Supreme Court.
And the soon-to-be President Trump won’t be afraid to say "radical Islam" while destroying ISIS. He will “drain the swamp,” and reduce the size of government, eliminate bureaucratic waste, fraud, abuse and send control over public education back to the states.
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There’s reason to believe real, lasting change is coming our way. It will be up to all of us to hold Trump and his team accountable.
Adapted from Sean Hannity's monologue on "Hannity," Jan. 10, 2017