Barack Hussein Obama
Accomplishments
Barack Hussein Obama served as the 44th President of the United States from 2009 to 2017. As the first African-American elected President of the United States, Barack Obama became a pivotal figure in American history. His achievements in office have made him one of the most transformative presidents of the past hundred years. President Obama took office with a country in peril and led it through a great recession, two wars, civil unrest, a rash of mass shootings, and changing cultural demographics. In the 2008 campaign, he called for change and eight years later the United States is a more prosperous country because of it.
• Rescued the country from the Great Recession, cutting the unemployment rate from 10% to 4.7% over six years
• Signed the Affordable Care Act which provided health insurance to over 20 million uninsured Americans.
• Ended the war in Iraq.
• Ordered for the capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden.
• Passed the $787 billion America Recovery and Reinvestment Act to spur economic growth during the Great Recession.
• Supported the Lesbian Bisexual Gay Transgender (LGBT) community’s fight for marriage quality.
• Saved the U.S. auto industry.
• Began the drawdown of troops in Afghanistan.
• Signed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals allowing as many as 5 million people living in the U.S. illegally to avoid deportation and receive work permits.
• Signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act to re-regulate the financial sector.
• Decreased the veteran homeless rate by 50 percent.
• Reversed Bush-era torture policies.
• Began the process of normalizing relations with Cuba.
• Increased Department of Veteran Affairs funding.
• Signed the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act.
• Boosted fuel efficiency standards for cars.
• Improved school nutrition with the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act.
• Repealed the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.
• Signed the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, making it a federal crime to assault anyone based on sexual or gender identification.
• Helped negotiate the landmark Iran Nuclear Deal.
• Signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to combat pay discrimination against women.
• Nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, making her the first Hispanic ever to serve as a justice.
• Supported veterans through a $78 billion tuition assistance GI bill.
• Won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
• Launched My Brother’s Keeper, a White House initiative designed to help young minorities achieve their full potential.
• Expanded embryonic stem cell research leading to groundbreaking work in areas including spinal injury treatment and cancer.
• Led global efforts to finalize the International Climate Agreement to reduce carbon emissions and increase carbon trading.
• Biggest job-creating President in U.S. history because his policies put 22.309 million people to work from the depths of the recession in January 2010 to the end
of his term.
• Enacted the first open data law.
• Enacted the Plain Writing Act of 2010 requiring all Federal communication be written in easy to understand language.
• Enacted the Home Affordable Refinance Act.
