Obama Legacy Leaves Mixed Success In AZ

By Lorin McLain

Leaving office after two terms of butting heads with Republican majority members, it’s no surprise the legacy of Barack Obama will show mixed success in policies affecting Arizona. The Grand Canyon State’s current economic health is noticeably better now than the time of his inauguration, when many members of the Republican majority legislature made it no secret their priority was for him to fail. Contrary to statements made by former Governor Jan Brewer during her term in office, the president deserves some credit for saving Arizona from the undertow of the Great Recession. Obama’s visits to a state that voted against him in two elections offers a good timeline on federal policies that have impacted citizens in the desert southwest.

Within a month of taking office in 2009, President Obama chose Mesa Dobson High School to discuss mortgage relief programs intended to stem the tide of homeowners falling into foreclosure. He returned to the Valley in 2013 as Arizona’s housing market was back on the upswing to address a crowd at Desert Vista High School in Ahwatukee. His plans to help a then resurging housing market continued, revealing a program last year at Central High School aimed to provide breaks on mortgage insurance rates for first time homeowners.

In 2010, buying health insurance became a reality for all Arizonans with the passing of The Affordable Care Act. By 2014, it looked promising when each county had multiple insurers competing to offer coverage in Arizona’s insurance exchange. Unfortunately, Arizona became the poster child of Obamacare’s problems when the number of insurers available to most counties shrank to one, and premiums were projected to go up over 116 percent. Administration officials said impact of the premium increases would be limited by subsidies for low-income people, and they were working to bolster the exchanges. The future of Obamacare is now totally up in the air under President-elect Donald Trump, who has said repeatedly he plans to get rid of it.

Arizona’s undocumented immigrants found a strong ally with President Obama when he made amnesty a cornerstone of his immigration policy. The president used the power of executive order in 2012 to push DACA, or the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA). The program allowed undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children to receive temporary work permits and protection from deportation. The president issued another order in 2014 to expand the program, and to offer similar protection to parents of children made citizens by birth. That order was overturned by a U.S. Supreme Court decision.

The president’s focus on clean energy no doubt helped spark solar power investments in Arizona. The administration’s 2009 stimulus plan invested $90 billion in renewable energy initiatives that included research on energy efficiency, electric automobiles, renewable electricity, and smart grids. While solar power use seems to be growing in Arizona, public utilities like APS have been criticized in recent years for getting rid of incentives and pushing rate plan proposals solar advocates say are aimed at killing the industry.

Arizona benefits from millions of tourism dollars spent by people exploring its vast stretches of wilderness areas. Obama signed the Omnibus Public Lands Management Plan in 2009, protecting more than two million acres of wilderness, more than a thousand miles of rivers, and creates thousands of miles of historic and recreational trails. The First Family took a day trip to the Grand Canyon’s South Rim while visiting Phoenix for a national VFW convention in Phoenix in 2009. Obama told local media “Last time I was here, I was 11 years old.”