A Promised Land

The Recovery Act is a fiscal stimulus package signed into law by Obama on 17 February 2009. Obama and his team developed the nearly trillion dollar bill in response to the recession that followed the housing market crash of 2008. The rationale for the Recovery Act is based on Keynesian economic theory, which promotes government spending in times of recession to offset the decrease in private spending. The bill’s main objectives were to save existing jobs, create new jobs, provide temporary relief for those most impacted by the recession, and stimulate the economy with government investment in education, healthcare, and infrastructure, including renewable energy. No House Republicans voted in favor of the Recovery Act. Only three Republican senators supported the stimulus. There is broad consensus among economist that the Recovery Act reduced unemployment and that the benefits of the package outweighed the roughly $800 billion price-tag. Many economists argue that the stimulus was not large enough.

The DREAM Act is a legislative proposal that grants temporary conditional residency to unauthorized immigrants who entered the US as minors. The Act grants these immigrants the right to work and provides a path to permanent residency. Various versions of the bill have been introduced in the Senate since 2001. As part of his immigration reform plan, Obama reintroduced the DREAM Act in March 2009, only to see it defeated in the Senate in September 2010. He and top Democrats reintroduced the bill the following November. The DREAM Act passed the House on December 8 but was once again defeated on the Senate floor. Obama supported the reintroduction of the bill in May 2011. Later that year, California enacted a state version of the DREAM Act, giving undocumented immigrant students access to private college scholarships for state schools. Illinois followed suit soon after. Unable to pass the DREAM Act, Obama announced in 2012 that his administration would stop deporting undocumented immigrants who match certain criteria included in the DREAM Act. He also signed an executive order called the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which allows some unauthorized immigrants who arrived in the country as minors to work and avoid deportation. However, DACA does not offer a path to permanent residency or citizenship.

Dodd-Frank is a federal law enacted on 21 July 2010 in response to the recession that followed the housing market crash of 2008. The Wall Street reform bill introduced regulations to make future financial crises less likely. Dodd-Frank reorganized the existing financial regulatory system, created new mechanisms for oversight, gave the Federal Reserve new powers to regulate important institutions, and restricted banks from making certain speculative investments. Other provisions of the bill impact corporate governance, contracts, and credit rating agencies.

DADT is a federal policy that barred members of the LGBTQ community form opening serving in the military. It was instituted during the Clinton administration on 21 December 1993 and remained in effect until 20 September 2011. 

The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement provided detailed plans for coordinated international action against climate change. The accord included greenhouse gas reduction targets, a global carbon-trading system, and financing procedures to help poor nations adopt clean energy and preserve carbon-neutralizing forests, notably, the Amazon. Congressional Republicans opposed the Kyoto Protocol. Preferring a delay to defeat, Clinton refrained from sending the agreement to the Senate for a vote. In 2009, a year after the protocol went into full effect, the US was one of only five nations not party to the agreement. The others were Andorra and Vatican City, both of which are so small they were named observers rather than being asked to join; Taiwan, whose contested status as an independent nation prevented it from signing; and Afghanistan, which cited its 30-year occupation as an excuse.

New START is a nuclear nonproliferation treaty between the US and Russia that was signed on 8 April 2010 in Prague by Obama and Medvedev. The treaty was extended in 2021 and is expected to last until 5 February 2026. New START reduced the number of inactive nuclear warheads that can be stockpiled. It also limited the number of deployed and non-deployed intercontinental ballistic missile launchers, submarine-launched ballistic missile launchers, and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments. The treaty allows for satellite and remote monitoring to verify compliance.