Friday, September 30, 2011

Obama's Fascination With The Number "25"

It's almost laughable. It seems like every time Obama and his people quote a number regarding his policies, some variant of the number "25" is involved:
  • As President-elect, Obama promised that his health care plan would save the average family $2500 a year in health insurance premiums.
  • Also as President-elect, he promised that, by the year 2025, 25% of this nation's energy would come from clean, renewable resources.
  • Currently, he's claiming that 2.5 million jobs were saved or created by his Stimulus Package.
  • He wants to raise taxes on couples making $250,000 a year or more with his so-called millionaires and billionaires tax.
  • He wants to raise the capital gains tax from the current 15% to 25%
  • As President-elect, he proposed spending $25 billion dollars on infrastructure projects to create a million jobs.
  • Also, before taking office, he proposed that the standard for compliance with the Family Leave Act be lowered from companies having 50 or more employees to companies having 25 or more.
  • Then, as candidate Obama, he proposed $25 billion a year in home heating relief to cover the high cost of gas and oil.
  • At the same time as above, he proposed $25 billion to the states to help them avoid raising property taxes.
  • In August, he floated a plan that would convert 250,000 foreclosed on homes into rental properties.
  • In April, Obama claimed that the top 1% of wage earners in this country saw their salaries increase by $250,000 while 90% of Americans saw their salaries fall.
  • Maybe just another coincidence, but Obama's latest jobs plan will save or create another 2.5 million jobs at a cost of $250,000 per job.
  • In September, along with other housing initiatives, he announced that he will push for variable term mortgages that start out at a low interest rate of 2.5% to attract buyers back into the housing market.

Having worked with calculations, projects and numbers all my life, I have never seen such a series of coincidences as shown above; and this was just a sampling. It is almost as if the numbers were being pulled out of somebody's you-know-what; rather than being developed through some form of empirical analysis. But, then, I wouldn't want to accuse this President of ever fudging the facts.

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