Letter: Hard to beat Obama’s record

Yes, make America great again.

I am looking forward to seeing the new presidential and congressional leadership making things even better as they improve on the following accomplishments of President Barack Obama.

In the past eight years:

▪  The Dow Jones Industrial Average index tripled, from 6,547 to about 20,000.

▪  Unemployment was cut in half, from 9.5 percent to about 4.6 percent.

▪  There has been a record of 65 consecutive months of job growth.

▪  Average wage growth increased about 66 percent, from 1.7 percent to 2.8 percent today.

▪  The annual federal deficit has been cut by 66 percent.

▪  Taxes were cut for 95 percent of American workers.

▪  The number of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan were cut by 90 percent, from 180,000 to 15,000.

▪  Prescription drug prices for seniors were cut by 50 percent.

▪  30,000,000 more got health insurance.

▪  Media coverage was welcomed.

Many believed these statistics meant we were going in the “wrong” direction. Personally, I didn’t think so.

On the other hand, we now seem to be losing transparency and accountability.

Obama favored transparency and accountability and released his tax returns every year. President Donald Trump appears to be hiding something.

Hillary Clinton released 40,000 of her emails and proved her innocence in the Benghazi incident. Vice President Mike Pence won’t release his emails to prove his innocence in the corruption scandal in Indiana.

After eight years planning, there is still no proposal better than “Obamacare.”

Since the election, hypocrisy is everywhere while transparency and accountability are absent.

This story was originally published February 7, 2017 at 12:51 PM with the headline "Letter: Hard to beat Obama’s record."