Obama is not a socialist

A lot has been said about the “socialist-Marxist” world view and policies of the Obama administration. Some of the claims are trumped up nonsense meant to scare the elderly residents of the bible belt, like fear-mongering about “Obama’s Czars”, a terrifying Russian sounding word that proves comrade Obama is unilaterally seizing power from the people. Of course, that would mean also that Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II were also guilty of being communist sympathizers and tyrannical, Czar loving dictators. Other critiques about Obama’s policies are a little more rational and beg the question, “Is Obama a Socialist?” Let’s look at some of the well known arguments and see if we can’t come to a consensus.

Socialist Policy #1: The de facto nationalization of General Motors and Chrysler

Like it or not, allowing GM and Chrysler to fall into bankruptcy would have been devastating to the U.S. economy. We are a nation obsessed with the automobile and our economy is intrinsically tied to the success or failure of the auto industry. If two of the “Big Three” U.S. auto manufacturers had gone under, we would have lost tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs. Those direct job losses would have caused massive layoffs to ripple through the secondary and tertiary sales and support sectors for all things automobile. Car dealerships, auto-parts manufacturers, auto-parts retailers, service stations, tire manufacturers, and every other branch of the automotive money tree would have been decimated. This was the scenario staring us in the face, and President Obama decided to help resuscitate the dying companies by delivering an infusion of public equity that acted as life support until they could once again function on their own.

The largest portion of the auto-bailout went to GM, at around $50 billion, which has been paid back in the form of cash and stock equity. The U.S. government owns a 33% stake in GM worth around $10 billion, but GM is once again turning a profit and has reclaimed the top spot in world auto sales. If the auto bailout had been a socialist endeavor, the U.S. government would now own outright the means of producing and distributing automobiles which they would then sell and collect the profit from. Obama acted more like a venture capitalist than a communist dictator, I know this because I did not get my free Impala in the mail.

Socialist Policy #2: Subsidizing the “Green Economy”

By now, everyone knows the name, “Solyndra.” The failed solar panel manufacturer received $527 million in government loans and soon after filed for bankruptcy. A report today outlines the chapter 11 filing and delivers the bad news: Tax payers will only reclaim, at the most, $24 million. This company failed miserably, just ask the private equity firms that invested and lost more than $1 billion dollars on Solyndra. While this company and a handful of others have failed to produce a return on the public investment made by Obama’s green energy initiatives, there have been some successes.

Nearly 90% of the DOE green energy loans have been classified by independent agencies as “low risk,” and most of the money went to utility projects, not green energy manufacturers. As for loan guarantees to manufacturers, our government has been investing in energy R&D for decades. The idea that DOE loans to “green” energy companies are somehow more “socialist” than the annual $52 billion in federal fossil fuel subsidies we give away to some of the most profitable companies in the history of the world, is representative of the public ignorance of economics and our government’s historical role in subsidizing private industry. If Obama was instituting a green energy utopia by executive fiat, why is he continuing to subsidize fossil fuel at ten times the level of renewable energy?

Socialist Policy #3: Obamacare

Oh, how I wish Obamacare was socialist health utopia. I wish that the American people owned in common the means by which to care for one another. If Obamacare was socialism “we the people” would have had the power to reform the health care and health insurance systems and dictate how they spend our money. If Obamacare was nationalized medicine, we would have a new branch of government that operated non-profit health care services for public consumption. If Obamacare was socialism, states couldn’t opt out, but they can in 2017. If Obamacare was socialism, everybody would get to be insured, but 27 million will still need coverage after full implementation of the law. If Obamacare was socialism, the U.S. would finally offer the same social guarantee as EVERY OTHER WESTERN NATION. If Obamacare was socialism, maybe we’d get more for our money: We spend more than any other country per capita on a health care system ranked 37th in the world by the WHO. Sadly, Obamacare is not socialism, it is another federal program that acts as a de facto subsidy to the health insurance industry.

So, I hope that it is now clear to most of you that President Barack Obama is not a socialist.