I’ve been wondering for a bit why during the time the Democrats controlled the legislature, executive, and judicial branches during Obama’s first term in 2008 more wasn’t accomplished. Shouldn’t that have been the opportunity to make Row V Way law and fix the electoral college? I understand the recession was going on but outside of Obamacare getting passed which didnt go far enough it seems like they didn’t really do much with all that power. Are there other important accomplishments from this time that didn’t get the news they deserved? It seems like the voters have done their job in the past to elect people to fix things and yet we are still here begging people to vote to fix issues like abortion rights.

  • GamingChairModel@lemmy.world
    86·
    2 months ago

    I disagree with your premise. The 111th Congress got a lot done. Here’s a list of major legislation.

    • Lily Ledbetter Act made it easier to recover for employment discrimination, and explicitly overruled a Supreme Court case making it harder to recover back pay.
    • The ARRA was a huge relief bill for the financial crisis, one of the largest bills of all time.
    • The Credit CARD Act changed a bunch of consumer protection for credit card borrowers.
    • Dodd Frank was groundbreaking, the biggest financial reform bill since probably the Great Depression, and created the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, probably one of the most important pro-consumer agencies in the federal government today.
    • School lunch reforms (why the right now hates Michelle Obama)
    • Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP or SCHIP): healthcare coverage, independent of Obamacare, for all children under 18.
    • Obamacare itself, which also includes comprehensive student loan reform too.

    That’s a big accomplishment list for 2 years, plus some smaller accomplishments like some tobacco reform, some other reforms relating to different agencies and programs.

    Plus that doesn’t include the administrative regulations and decisions the administrative agencies passed (things like Net Neutrality), even though those generally only last as long as the next president would want to keep them (see, again, Net Neutrality).

    • PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee
      19·
      1 month ago

      Not to mention he got that all done with a majority that was actually “guaranteed” to be able to do stuff for all of a few weeks, during which his senate majority actively sabotaged Obamacare from being a public option healthcare act, because fuckin Manchincrats just have to be the singularly most determined to be killjoy assholes on the face of the entire fucking planet

      • thallamabond@lemmy.world
        7·
        1 month ago

        Joe Lieberman was his name, while he did not act alone, I’ll always remember he took the public option from us.

        Also he founded No Labels, the “Unity” party that does not have a platform, but does have billionaire donors

    • BackpackCat@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      1 month ago

      Thanks for this info. I always kinda felt like I must be missing something. That is a significant amount of stuff to get done especially in the face of the insane amount of filibustering the Republicans did during this time that others pointed out. I mean I still wish more was done but it gives me hope that if we can somehow weather the storm of fascists that some good legislation can be passed in the future even in the face of opposition.