Barack Obama & George W.

Bush
Barack Hussien Obama, Jr. is the 44th President of the United States. His story is the American story,
values from the heartland, a middle-class upbringing in a strong family, hard work and education as
the means of getting ahead, and the conviction that a life so blessed should be lived in service to
others. Barack Obama is a multiracial American politician, though he refers to himself as African-
American. He served as Democratic state senator in Illinois, and then as US Senator from that state,
before being elected President in 2008. His father was an economics student from Nairobi, his mother
a white American anthropology student when they married. They divorced when Obama was young,
and his father returned to Kenya. Obama was raised by his mother until about age 10, when his
maternal grandmother in Honolulu took him in. He graduated with honors from Harvard Law School,
where he was the first African-American to become Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Law Review.
Obama practiced civil rights law, representing victims of housing and employment discrimination and
working on voting rights legislation. He worked as a community organizer in a poor Chicago
neighborhood. He has spoken against NAFTA and racial profiling, and for universal health care. From
the start, he opposed war in Iraq.

President Obama's years of public service are based around his unwavering belief in the ability to
unite people around a politics of purpose. In the Illinois State Senate, he passed the first major ethics
reform in 25 years, cut taxes for working families, and expanded health care for children and their
parents. As a United States Senator, he reached across the aisle to pass groundbreaking lobbying
reform, lock up the world's most dangerous weapons, and bring transparency to government by
putting federal spending online.In his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, Obama admits that he
used marijuana and cocaine as a teenager. It is thus ironic that if he were a foreign national, he would
be denied admission to the United States based on his past drug use. He was elected the 44th President
of the United States on November 4, 2008, and sworn in on January 20, 2009. He and his wife,
Michelle, are the proud parents of two daughters, Malia

George W. Bush is the 43rd President of the United States. He was sworn into office on January 20,
2001, re-elected on November 2, 2004, and sworn in for a second term on January 20, 2005. Before
his Presidency, he served for 6 years as Governor of the State of Texas. President Bush was born July
6, 1946, in New Haven, Connecticut, to Barbara and George H.W. Bush – later the 41st President of
the United States. In 1948, the family moved to, where President Bush grew up in Midland. He
received a bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University in 1968 and then served as a pilot in the
Texas Air National Guard. President Bush received a Master of Business Administration from;
Harvard Business School in 1975. Following graduation, he moved back to Midland and began a
career in the energy business. After working on his father’s successful 1988 Presidential campaign,
President Bush assembled a group of partners that purchased the Texas Rangers baseball franchise in
1989.

The most significant event of President Bush’s tenure came on September 11, 2001, when terrorists
killed nearly 3,000 people on American soil. President Bush responded with a comprehensive strategy
to protect the American people. He led the most dramatic reorganization of the federal government
since the beginning of the Cold War, reforming the intelligence community and establishing new
institutions like the Department of Homeland Security. He built global coalitions to remove violent
regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq that threatened America; liberating more than 50 million people from
tyranny. He recognized that freedom and hope are the best alternative to the extremist ideology of the
terrorists, so he provided unprecedented American support for young democracies and dissidents in
the Middle East and beyond. In the more than seven years after September 11, 2001, the United States
was not attacked again. President Bush is married to Laura Welch Bush, a former teacher and
librarian whom he met at a friend’s backyard barbeque. The President and Mrs. Bush have twin
 Barack Obama & George W. Bush
daughters, Barbara and Jenna, and a son-in-law, Henry Hager. The Bush family also includes two
dogs, Barney and Miss Beazley.

George Bush campaigned in 2000 on a platform of lower taxes and less government spending. He
betrayed his party by lowering taxes but not decreasing spending. As a result, the government went
ten trillion dollars in debt! And the government's failure to pay this debt has caused other nations to be
reluctant to loan the United States money. The international market's lack of confidence in the U.S. -
combined with the Federal Reserve printing money with nothing to back it up, in a desperate attempt
to keep the debt from getting even more out of hand - is what has caused the devaluing of the U.S.
dollar, which has contributed significantly to the economic recession we're now experiencing.

Now Obama wants to continue the failed fiscally irresponsible policies of President Bush. Obama
wants to lower taxes, but he also wants to increase spending. It's the same exact mistake President
Bush made. According to the Tax Policy Center, Obama's spending policies would put the United
States another 3.3 trillion in debt in ten years. Government debt can't continue to increase indefinitely.
The bigger the debt gets, the higher we'll have to raise taxes to pay it off. Those tax increases will hurt
every family in America. Obama's plan to increase government spending while lowering taxes (the
same mistake President Bush made) seems too absurd to be real, but that's what he's claimed that he's
going to do, in his own words. The Bush Administration has been eight long years of lowered taxes
but increased spending. Obama wants to continue Bush's failed fiscally irresponsible policies. Perhaps
the biggest different between these two presidents is their skin color, despite that they are relative to
each other. After all, Obama is not a complete different from Bush, so, Yes, we did, Obama.