President Obama told wealthy Democratic donors Tuesday night that America is “significantly better off” under his leadership than under President George W. Bush.
At a fundraiser in New York for Democratic candidates for Senate, Mr. Obama said that “on almost every metric, the country is significantly better off than we were when I came into office.” He didn’t mention his predecessor by name.
The president listed his accomplishments: lowering the unemployment rate from 10 percent in his first year to 5.4 percent, doubling the value of the stock market, providing 16 million people with health care, reducing health care inflation to its lowest level in 50 years, doubling the production of clean energy, decreasing the “pace” of carbon emissions, ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, among others.
“We did all that while cutting the deficit by two-thirds,” he said.
He said he accomplished those goals “because in the first two years of office I had a Congress that actually wanted to solve problems. I had a Congress that was willing to do tough things.”
Of the $820 billion economic stimulus program in his first term, the president said, “We had to put a big slug of capital into the financial system to unlock it and to save the global economy. That was not popular, but we had people in office, in Congress at that time, who were willing to do responsible things even when it wasn’t popular.”
“We need a Democratic Congress to really do what we could accomplish in this country,” Mr. Obama told the donors.
Supporters paid $10,000 to $33,400 to hear Mr. Obama speak at the Upper East Side home of Drew and Rachel Katz. Mrs. Katz is the widow of the parking and publishing magnate Lewis Katz.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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