Obama: A President For the Big Guys

By his own account, Obama is a protector of the little guy. However, when you look at who has actually benefited the most during his administration, the exact opposite becomes true. The two clear winners of the Obama presidency have been big government and Wall Street. The losers? Workers, small businesses, and small banks.

While Obama may denigrate Wall Street as "fat cat bankers," according to the Washington Post he has raised more from Wall Street than all of the Republican candidates combined. Not only that, Wall Street firms have earned more in the first 2 1/2 years of the Obama administration than they did during the eight years of the Bush administration. Think about that for a second. Under Obama, Wall Street has made three times as much money per year in a historically bad economy than they did under Bush in a generally good economy.

Smaller banks? They haven't fared as well. Regulations like Dodd-Frank are far too watered-down to prevent the problems that caused the 2008 financial crisis, but they are complex enough to force small banks to spend inordinate amounts of money on compliance.

And then there's big government, which now employs 140,800 more people than at the beginning of Obama's tenure. Obamacare has given unprecedented power to government officials--however, its passage in March 2010 was followed by a sudden halt in private-sector hiring. I don't see this as a coincidence. Again, big businesses have the resources to give government-approved health insurance to all their workers. But small businesses--the country's top job creators--often do not. The thing is, small businesses are only exempted from Obamacare cost burdens if they have less than 50 workers. So basically, Obama's message to small companies with 30-40 workers is "Don't expand, and stop hiring." Interesting message coming from a president who claims his top priority is jobs.

Speaking of jobs, a Canadian company wants to build a pipeline from Alberta to Texas that would employ over 20,000 workers. Obama, however, announced that he is delaying approval until 2013--after the elections. It seems that appeasing environmental activists in an election year is actually more important to Obama than jobs. I would almost understand it if he killed the project because he truly thought that a pipeline would do too much damage to the environment. But punting until 2013 just gives the impression that he is too cowardly to make a decision that might offend special interest groups. Winner? The environmental lobby. Loser? Once again, American workers.