Introduction
The Presidency of Barack Obama began on January 20, 2009, when he became the 44th President of the United States. Obama was a United States Senator from Illinois at the time of his victory over Arizona Senator John McCain in the 2008 presidential election. Barack Obama is the first African-American president of the United States, as well as the first to be born in Hawaii. He was elected to a second term on November 6, 2012.
Obama came to office during a global financial recession following the financial crisis of 2008. His major policy initiatives have included changes in tax policies, legislation to reform the United States health care industry, foreign policy initiatives, and the phasing out of the detention of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. In October of 2009, Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."
Economic Policies
Upon entering office, Obama planned to center his attention on handling the global financial crisis. Even before his inauguration, he lobbied Congress to pass an economic stimulus bill, which became the top priority during his first month in office. On February 17, 2009, Obama signed into law a $787 billion plan that included spending for health care, infrastructure, and education, as well as various tax breaks, incentives, and direct assistance to individuals. The tax provisions of the law reduced taxes for 98% of taxpayers, bringing tax rates to their lowest levels in 60 years.
As part of the 2010 budget proposal, the Obama administration has proposed additional measures to attempt to stabilize the economy, including a $2–3 trillion measure aimed at stabilizing the financial system and freeing up credit. The program includes up to $1 trillion to buy toxic bank assets, an additional $1 trillion to expand a federal consumer loan program, and the $350 billion left in the Troubled Assets Relief Program. The plan also includes $50 billion intended to slow the wave of mortgage foreclosures. The 2011 budget includes a three-year freeze on discretionary spending, proposes several program cancellations, and raises taxes on high income earners to bring down deficits during the economic recovery.
Obama and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
President Obama addressing a joint session of Congress on February 24, 2009
Health Care
Once the economic stimulus bill was enacted, health care reform became Obama's top domestic priority. On July 14, 2009, House Democratic leaders introduced a 1,000-page plan for overhauling the U.S. health care system, which Obama wanted Congress to approve by the end of the year. On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the bill into law. Immediately following the bill's passage, the House voted in favor of a reconciliation measure to make significant changes and corrections to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which was passed by both houses with two minor alterations on March 25, 2010, and signed into law on March 30, 2010. The goals of this Act (which came to be know as Obamacare) were to provide all Americans with access to affordable health insurance, to require that everyone in the United States had some form of health insurance, and to lower the costs of healthcare.
LGBTQ Rights
On December 22, 2010, Obama signed the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act. The "Don't ask, don't tell" policy of 1993 had prevented gay and lesbian people from serving openly in the United States Armed Forces, and repealing this policy had been a key campaign promise Obama had made during the 2008 presidential campaign.
During Barack Obama’s second term in office, courts began to counter efforts by conservatives to outlaw same-sex marriage. A series of decisions declared nine states’ prohibitions against same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court rejected an attempt to overturn a federal court ruling to that effect in California in June 2013. Shortly thereafter, the Supreme Court also ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 was unconstitutional, because it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. These decisions seem to allow legal challenges in all the states that persist in trying to block same-sex unions.
Foreign Policy
In his first week in office, Obama signed Executive Order 13492 suspending all the ongoing proceedings of Guantanamo military commission and ordering the detention facility to be shut down within the year. He also signed Executive Order 13491, which required the Army Field Manual be used as a guide for interrogations of supposed terrorists and banned torture and other coercive techniques, such as waterboarding.
Obama declared his plan for ending the Iraq War on February 27, 2009 in a speech at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina before an audience of Marines stationed there. According to the president, combat troops would be withdrawn from Iraq by August 2010, leaving a contingent of up to 50,000 servicepeople to continue advisory, training, and counterterrorism operations until as late as the end of 2011. In May of 2014, Obama announced that, for the most part, U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan were over. Although a residual force of 9,800 soldiers will remain to continue training the Afghan army, by 2016, all U.S. troops will have left the country, except for a small number to defend U.S. diplomatic posts.
Starting with information received in July of 2010, intelligence developed by the CIA over the next several months determined what they believed to be the location of Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda and the person behind the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, in a large compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. On May 1, 2011, the U.S. initiated Operation Neptune's Spear, resulting in the death of bin Laden and the seizure of papers, computer drives, and disks from the compound. Bin Laden's body was identified through DNA testing and buried at sea several hours later.
Assassination of Osama Bin Laden
U.S. President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, along with members of the national security team, receive an update on Operation Neptune's Spear, a mission against Osama bin Laden, in one of the conference rooms of the Situation Room of the White House, May 1, 2011.