What you’ll learn to do: describe political and social shifts of the recent past

Figure 1. President Barack Obama.

Despite Republican resistance and political gridlock in Washington during his first term in office, President Barack Obama oversaw the distribution of the TARP programs $7.77 trillion to help shore up the nation’s banking system, and Congress authorized $80 billion to help Chrysler and General Motors. The goals of Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) were to provide all Americans with access to affordable health insurance, to require that everyone in the United States had some form of health insurance, and to lower the costs of healthcare. During his second term, the nation struggled to grow modestly, the percentage of the population living in poverty remained around 15 percent, and unemployment was still high in some areas. Acceptance of same-sex marriage grew, and the United States sharply reduced its military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan.