But in 2009 and beyond, the Obama Administration was thrust into battle with a Republican-controlled Congress. The two sides searched, against all odds, for a bipartisan agreement to back fiscal spending projects, but other than the controversial trillion-dollar bailout programs that kept Wall Street from imploding, nothing substantial to address mainstream America’s needs was ever passed. Stimulus initiatives became piecemeal and politicized and were ultimately insufficient to give the U.S. economy what it needed to grow.
