New York Times endorses President Barack Obama

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The editorial board of the New York Times endorses President Barack Obama for reelection. Barack Obama for Re-Election (excerpt):

President Obama has shown a firm commitment to using government to help
foster growth. He has formed sensible budget policies that are not
dedicated to protecting the powerful, and has worked to save the social
safety net to protect the powerless. Mr. Obama has impressive
achievements despite the implacable wall of refusal erected by
Congressional Republicans so intent on stopping him that they risked
pushing the nation into depression, held its credit rating hostage, and
hobbled economic recovery.

Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, has gotten this far
with a guile that allows him to say whatever he thinks an audience wants
to hear. But he has tied himself to the ultraconservative forces that
control the Republican Party and embraced their policies, including
reckless budget cuts and 30-year-old, discredited trickle-down ideas.
Voters may still be confused about Mr. Romney’s true identity, but they
know the Republican Party, and a Romney administration would reflect its
agenda. Mr. Romney’s choice of Representative Paul Ryan as his running
mate says volumes about that.

We have criticized individual policy choices that Mr. Obama has made
over the last four years, and have been impatient with his unwillingness
to throw himself into the political fight. But he has shaken off the
hesitancy that cost him the first debate, and he approaches the election
clearly ready for the partisan battles that would follow his victory.

We are confident he would challenge the Republicans in the “fiscal
cliff” battle even if it meant calling their bluff, letting the Bush tax
cuts expire and forcing them to confront the budget sequester they
created. Electing Mr. Romney would eliminate any hope of deficit
reduction that included increased revenues.

In the poisonous atmosphere of this campaign, it may be easy to overlook
Mr. Obama’s many important achievements, including carrying out the
economic stimulus, saving the auto industry, improving fuel efficiency
standards, and making two very fine Supreme Court appointments.

Health Care

Mr. Obama has achieved the most sweeping health care reforms since the
passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. The reform law takes a big
step toward universal health coverage, a final piece in the social
contract.

It was astonishing that Mr. Obama and the Democrats in Congress were
able to get a bill past the Republican opposition. But the Republicans’
propagandistic distortions of the new law helped them wrest back control
of the House, and they are determined now to repeal the law.

That would eliminate the many benefits the reform has already brought:
allowing children under 26 to stay on their parents’ policies; lower
drug costs for people on Medicare who are heavy users of prescription
drugs; free immunizations, mammograms and contraceptives; a ban on
lifetime limits on insurance payments. Insurance companies cannot deny
coverage to children with pre-existing conditions. Starting in 2014,
insurers must accept all applicants. Once fully in effect, the new law
would start to control health care costs.

Mr. Romney has no plan for covering the uninsured beyond his callous
assumption that they will use emergency rooms. He wants to use voucher
programs to shift more Medicare costs to beneficiaries and block grants
to shift more Medicaid costs to the states.

The Economy

Mr. Obama prevented another Great Depression. The economy was cratering
when he took office in January 2009. By that June it was growing, and it
has been ever since (although at a rate that disappoints everyone),
thanks in large part to interventions Mr. Obama championed, like the
$840 billion stimulus bill. Republicans say it failed, but it created
and preserved 2.5 million jobs and prevented unemployment from reaching
12 percent. Poverty would have been much worse without the billions
spent on Medicaid, food stamps and jobless benefits.

Last year, Mr. Obama introduced a jobs plan that included spending on
school renovations, repair projects for roads and bridges, aid to
states, and more. It was stymied by Republicans. Contrary to Mr.
Romney’s claims, Mr. Obama has done good things for small businesses —
like pushing through more tax write-offs for new equipment and temporary
tax cuts for hiring the unemployed.

The Dodd-Frank financial regulation was an important milestone. It is
still a work in progress, but it established the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau, initiated reform of the derivatives market, and
imposed higher capital requirements for banks. Mr. Romney wants to
repeal it.

If re-elected, Mr. Obama would be in position to shape the “grand
bargain” that could finally combine stimulus like the jobs bill with
long-term deficit reduction that includes letting the high-end Bush-era
tax cuts expire. Stimulus should come first, and deficit reduction as
the economy strengthens. Mr. Obama has not been as aggressive as we
would have liked in addressing the housing crisis, but he has increased
efforts in refinancing and loan modifications.

Mr. Romney’s economic plan, as much as we know about it, is regressive,
relying on big tax cuts and deregulation. That kind of plan was not the
answer after the financial crisis, and it will not create broad
prosperity.

Foreign Affairs

Mr. Obama and his administration have been resolute in attacking Al
Qaeda’s leadership, including the killing of Osama bin Laden. He has
ended the war in Iraq. Mr. Romney, however, has said he would have
insisted on leaving thousands of American soldiers there. He has
surrounded himself with Bush administration neocons who helped to
engineer the Iraq war, and adopted their militaristic talk in a way that
makes a Romney administration’s foreign policies a frightening
prospect.

Mr. Obama negotiated a much tougher regime of multilateral economic
sanctions on Iran. Mr. Romney likes to say the president was ineffective
on Iran, but at the final debate he agreed with Mr. Obama’s policies.
Mr. Obama deserves credit for his handling of the Arab Spring. The
killing goes on in Syria, but the administration is working to identify
and support moderate insurgent forces there. At the last debate, Mr.
Romney talked about funneling arms through Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which
are funneling arms to jihadist groups.

Mr. Obama gathered international backing for airstrikes during the
Libyan uprising, and kept American military forces in a background role.
It was smart policy.

In the broadest terms, he introduced a measure of military restraint
after the Bush years and helped repair America’s badly damaged
reputation in many countries from the low levels to which it had sunk by
2008.

The Supreme Court

The future of the nation’s highest court hangs in the balance in this
election — and along with it, reproductive freedom for American women
and voting rights for all, to name just two issues. Whoever is president
after the election will make at least one appointment to the court, and
many more to federal appeals courts and district courts.

Mr. Obama, who appointed the impressive Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia
Sotomayor, understands how severely damaging conservative activism has
been in areas like campaign spending. He would appoint justices and
judges who understand that landmarks of equality like the Voting Rights
Act must be defended against the steady attack from the right.

Mr. Romney’s campaign Web site says he will “nominate judges in the mold
of Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito,” among
the most conservative justices in the past 75 years. There is no doubt
that he would appoint justices who would seek to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Civil Rights

The extraordinary fact of Mr. Obama’s 2008 election did not usher in a
new post-racial era. In fact, the steady undercurrent of racism in
national politics is truly disturbing. Mr. Obama, however, has reversed
Bush administration policies that chipped away at minorities’ voting
rights and has fought laws, like the ones in Arizona, that seek to turn
undocumented immigrants into a class of criminals.

The military’s odious “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule was finally
legislated out of existence, under the Obama administration’s
leadership. There are still big hurdles to equality to be brought down,
including the Defense of Marriage Act, the outrageous federal law that
undermines the rights of gay men and lesbians, even in states that
recognize those rights.

Though it took Mr. Obama some time to do it, he overcame his hesitation
about same-sex marriage and declared his support. That support has
helped spur marriage-equality movements around the country. His Justice
Department has also stopped defending the Defense of Marriage Act
against constitutional challenges.

Mr. Romney opposes same-sex marriage and supports the federal act, which
not only denies federal benefits and recognition to same-sex couples
but allows states to ignore marriages made in other states. His campaign
declared that Mr. Romney would not object if states also banned
adoption by same-sex couples and restricted their rights to hospital
visitation and other privileges.

Mr. Romney has been careful to avoid the efforts of some Republicans to
criminalize abortion even in the case of women who had been raped,
including by family members. He says he is not opposed to contraception,
but he has promised to deny federal money to Planned Parenthood, on
which millions of women depend for family planning.

For these and many other reasons, we enthusiastically endorse President
Barack Obama for a second term, and express the hope that his victory
will be accompanied by a new Congress willing to work for policies that
Americans need.

The key here is "a new Congress," The obstructionist "less-than-do-nothing" Tea-Publican Congress — the "Worst. Congress. Ever." — has held this country hostage to an extremist ideology. They need to be thrown out of office en masse.