Has Barack Obama achieved these goals in the last six years?

Question

A claim, attributed to Occupy Democrats (which may or may not be true), that is doing rounds in social networks shows a photo of the current US President Barack Obama raising a toast with these words:

“In just six years, I nearly tripled the stock market, cut unemployment in half, ended two wars, cut the uninsured rate in half, brought gas prices down to $2.75, and cut the annual Bush deficit by two-thirds.
Oh, and I got Bin Laden.
Or as Fox News says, I have failed as President. RIGHT.”

Do the numbers in reality match the figures in the claim about the current US President?

That's 6 claims in one, preceeded by one you do not mention: *Did Obama actually say this?* The 6 are more a matter of 'attribution': Is saying that you caused this a notable claim? — , Feb 22 '16 at 11:20
@JanDoggen: I don't think the graphic is intended literally as a claim that Obama said this. Just that (in their opinion) it's something he could say. — Steve Jessop, Feb 22 '16 at 12:43
When it says "In six years" I think it means 6 years, starting from his inauguration, going to the date of that toast, 6 years later. So it is not "the last six years" as in the title of the question. — GEdgar, Feb 23 '16 at 03:56
The facts are roughly true, though exaggerated a little. However, the demonstrably false claim is the "I": some (though not all) of what happened would have happened with another president in the white house. — PatrickT, Feb 23 '16 at 09:25

score 67 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 22 '16 at 23:43

67

Tripled the stock market

False.

There are different stock market indexes, but none of them "tripled" between 2010 and 2016. Also, while 2008 was a historical low, the overall growth trend has been steady since the 1930's -- so we can't really say his result was exceptional.

^(source)

The Dow Jones index went from ~8,000 on January 20th, 2009 to about ~16,500 today, February 22nd, 2016, which is double and not triple.

Its maximum range is almost a triple: the Dow hit a minimum of 6,627 in March 2009 and a maximum of 18,273 in May 2015. This, though, is cherry picking.

Cut unemployment in half

True, but the initial figure was clearly exceptional. As you can see it went from 10% to 5% after growing from 4.5% to 10% after the 2008 mass layoffs. Since many of these layoffs were skilled workers, it stands to reason that the figure would go down naturally as they find new jobs.

^(source)

Ended two wars

True. The two wars intended here are the Iraq war and the war in Afghanistan. This is only true related to the United States involvement. Iraq was left in a state of civil war and Afghanistan is also unstable, and still sees the presence of US troops.

Cut the uninsured rate in half

False. The uninsured rate is lower than 2009 according to Gallup, but certainly not half.

^(source)

Brought gas prices down to $2.75

False.

According to the EIA the current price is $1.834 per gallon, much lower than that. However it's not correct to say he "brought gas prices down", because the prices were very similar in 2009-2010, six years ago.

^(source)

Cut the annual Bush deficit by two-thirds.

False.

While Bush did have a huge deficit on the last year of his presidency (more than $1.4 trillion) because of the banks bailouts, the rest of his tenure was between positive $0.1 trillion and negative $0.5 trillion, which is well in line with Obama's best result in 2015, around $0.45 trillion in the red.

^{(data source)}

Got Bin Laden

True.

On May 2, 2011, bin Laden was shot and killed inside a private residential compound in Abbottabad, where he lived with a local family from Waziristan, during a covert operation conducted by members of the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group and Central Intelligence Agency SAD/SOG operators on the orders of U.S. President Barack Obama.

^(source)

edited Feb 22 '16 at 23:43

Community

1

answered Feb 22 '16 at 11:36

Sklivvz

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Note: if someone can find a good historical uninsured rate that includes 2015, please edit it in. – Sklivvz Feb 22 '16 at 12:07
@Sklivz-Sites like these-http://www.gallup.com/opinion/chairman/181469/big-lie-unemployment.aspx show the unemployment rate to be at 9.6%. – pericles316 Feb 22 '16 at 12:45
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@pericles316 that's an *opinion* piece arguing that "the official unemployment rate, as reported by the U.S. Department of Labor, is extremely misleading". It might be true, however we need to measure the claim against official statistics and not opinion pieces. – Sklivvz Feb 22 '16 at 12:51
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@DougMcClean in 2015 his deficit was 1/3rd of Bush's 2009 deficit, but we need to cherry pick these two specific years. We can equally say that in 2010 Obama's deficit was 10 times Bush's 2007 deficit... – Sklivvz Feb 22 '16 at 14:35
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Excellent answer. Technically, unemployment is true, but I would say false. Unemployed are those actively looking for work. Another metric is those "participating in the workforce/looking for work." This number has reached a 38 year low. This has the Fed concerned. http://www.factcheck.org/2015/03/declining-labor-participation-rates/ – Paulb Feb 22 '16 at 14:46
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@BorderlineBaguette Not if you're wanting to have a reasonable comparison. The 2009 deficit was an odd duck that is not a reasonable basis for comparison for any prior or subsequent year without some serious adjustments. It included the creation of the TARP fund (which did not actually add to the long-term debt of the government, as it was repaid with interest in the following couple of fiscal years.) It also included hundreds of billions in spending authorized by Obama, not Bush. If you want to compare "Bush's legacy" you'd need to subtract all of that and also what the Dem Congress added. – reirab Feb 22 '16 at 16:03
@BorderlineBaguette If you're wanting a budget to describe as "Bush's legacy," FY07 would probably be the most reasonable, as it was the last budget proposed by Bush that was passed and it also didn't have any unusual huge one-time expenses (or revenues.) – reirab Feb 22 '16 at 16:11
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The ended two wars part is also pretty questionable, since AFAIK the U.S. is still currently fighting in both Iraq (against ISIS) and Afghanistan. And this is ignoring _starting_ another war (Libya) and trying to start another (vs. Assad in Syria.) I'd rate that claim as dubious at best. – reirab Feb 22 '16 at 16:20
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The quote is "*nearly* tripled the stock market," which is true. It went from 6600 to over 18000 from 2009 to 2015. – Bill the Lizard Feb 22 '16 at 16:46
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@BilltheLizard The Dow was at 8200 the day before he was inaugurated; the low of 6,443.27 was on March 6, 2009. It's not unreasonable to argue that is still really Bush's fault (to the extent you can apply blame to a president for the stock market, which is not much IMO), but it's rather cherry picking to pick the low _after_ inauguration, isn't it? – Joe Feb 22 '16 at 17:36
@BilltheLizard which index? – Sklivvz Feb 22 '16 at 17:37
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@Joe Any date you pick would be called cherry picking by someone. The market was in free-fall when Obama took office. Blaming him for that hardly seems fair. – Bill the Lizard Feb 22 '16 at 18:32
@Sklivvz The [DJIA](https://www.google.com/search?q=djia&oq=djia&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.567j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=122&ie=UTF-8). – Bill the Lizard Feb 22 '16 at 18:32
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@BilltheLizard Oh, I don't think it's appropriate to blame him at all. (I also don't think it's appropriate to give much credit; the rebound happened for reasons almost entirely unrelated to the President, as most do.) I'm just saying that it's probably exaggerating to say "nearly tripled" when nearly two thousand points of the "fall" happened while he was in office; saying "more than doubled" would have been sufficient. – Joe Feb 22 '16 at 18:34
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The "Ended two wars" claim is false, on two counts. First, there is only one war, against Islamic jihadism. Do we count WWII as two wars, even though the European and Pacific fronts were about as far apart as they could be geographically, and the Germans & Japanese had far less in common than the various jihadist groups? Second, even a brief glance at the news should show that the war certainly hasn't ended. – jamesqf Feb 22 '16 at 19:04
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@jamesqf And if we make it even more general (how about "war against enemies"?) we can guarantee that there will only ever be exactly one war going on! If we go by actual declarations of war by the US senate two wars is accurate. – Voo Feb 22 '16 at 21:02
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I suspect this is a two year old picture and the "just 6 years" refers to his 6 years after inauguration (Nov 2008-2014) rather than (2010-2016). – PVAL Feb 22 '16 at 22:08
Well, Obama certainly ended our *involvement* in Iraq, but in doing so he triggered the ISIS conflict. By withdrawing almost all of the US troops, against the advice of all of his military advisors, he created a power vacuum into which ISIS flowed. – David R Tribble Feb 22 '16 at 22:46
Obama condemned Bush for racking up a $4 trillion debt (mostly due to increased military spending in Iraq and Afghanistan), but he will leave office with another $16 trillion in debt (mostly due to increased entitlement spending). – David R Tribble Feb 22 '16 at 22:49
@PVAL His inauguration was in Jan 2009, not Nov 2008 (U.S. Presidents are elected in Nov of even-multiple-of-four years, but don't take office until the following January.) The claim about the DJIA wouldn't even be remotely close to true if you compared to the last day before Obama was elected (which was several months before the bottom was hit.) Incidentally, as I recall, the two days following his election saw the largest 2-day point drop in the history of the DJIA (though not the highest percentage drop, of course.) – reirab Feb 22 '16 at 23:24
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@Voo If we go by actual declarations of war by the U.S. Senate, no wars would be accurate. The U.S. Congress hasn't declared war since 1942. Also, if you go by actual U.S. declarations of war, WWII was [6 wars](http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/history/h_multi_sections_and_teasers/WarDeclarationsbyCongress.htm). – reirab Feb 22 '16 at 23:28
@reirab: And the 5 European declarations of war in WWII were against foes which, though they might be in different countries, shared the common ideology of Facism, and to a considerable extent a common strategy, Quite similar to the jihadists, really. – jamesqf Feb 22 '16 at 23:54
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@jamesqf: The Afghanistan war was against jihadists. The Iraq war was against a socialist, secular dictatorship. For quite some time prior to the US invasion Al-Qaeda actually made threats against Saddam's regime because he was considered a secularist. – slebetman Feb 23 '16 at 03:01
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At this stage, the comments are degenerating into quibbles about the definitions of common words. Let's [move that to chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/36115/discussion-on-answer-by-sklivvz-has-barack-obama-achieved-these-goals-in-the-las). – Oddthinking Feb 23 '16 at 11:12
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Managing the ... vagaries of the definition of the the word "unemployment" might be best handled by using and linking to the actual BLS reports, which include U1 through U6 unemployment numbers. [The latest one here, for example](http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm). Given that there has been constant criticism of the whole U3 = "official unemployment" thing for longer than I've been alive, it seems like including all the rates would be the more accurate and fair approach. – HopelessN00b Feb 23 '16 at 11:36
@slebetman: If you will recall, Saddam supplied arms and safe havens to jihadists, and used their rhetoric to maintain his position. As for different jihadist groups (or members of any group) fighting amongst themselves for control, what else is new? See e.g. the various purges of the Communist leadership, for just one example. – jamesqf Feb 23 '16 at 18:28
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Jan 20 2009 S&P 805, Jan 20 2015 2022 - This is 2.51X. Not a triple, but more than double. I've seen bank ads that call this exact number "Almost three times greater return." – JTP - Apologise to Monica Feb 23 '16 at 21:25
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@jamesqf: The United States also supplied arms to jihadists. And I might add that specifically, the United States supplied arms and military/intelligence training to Osama bin Laden. Does that make the US a jihadist too? – slebetman Feb 24 '16 at 01:50
"Its maximum range is almost a triple: the Dow hit a minimum of 6,627 in March 2009 and a maximum of 18,273 in May 2015. This, though, is cherry picking." - the claim said that he "nearly tripled," "in six years." - though the OP asks about the LAST six years, the claim covers the first. Which makes that true. The deficit, as it was when he took office, was cut by almost 2/3. What it was in other years under Bush is irrelevant, since Obama inherited the annual deficit that was handed to him. – PoloHoleSet Sep 30 '16 at 16:29
Almost four years later, there are undoubtedly American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan would call into the question "ended two wars". – Paul Draper Dec 31 '19 at 02:07

Has Barack Obama achieved these goals in the last six years?

1 Answers1

Tripled the stock market

Cut unemployment in half

Ended two wars

Cut the uninsured rate in half

Brought gas prices down to $2.75

Cut the annual Bush deficit by two-thirds.

Got Bin Laden