Jobs and the Economy

Now, 43 Straight Months of Unemployment Above 8%: President Obama has now presided over more months with unemployment above 8 percent (43) than the last 11 presidents combined. The unemployment rate has been at or above 8 percent for 43 consecutive months—three and a half years.  Before President Obama took office, unemployment had not been above 8 percent for this long since the Great Depression. Over three years ago, the Obama administration said that unemployment would never reach 8 percent if the “stimulus” was approved.

Spending

President Obama Ignores Legal Requirement to Report on Sequestration Impact:  Last week, the Obama administration failed to meet the legal deadline for submission of a report on the expected effects of sequestration on defense and non-defense programs. The Sequestration Transparency Act (H.R.5872), which the president signed on August 7, required the administration by law to release a detailed report of the devastating impact of arbitrary sequestration within 30 days. Even though the president signed the bill, the administration has ignored its requirement and has done nothing to encourage consideration of House-passed legislation (H.R. 5652) to replace the dangerous sequester set to ravage our national defense in January.  

Medicare

President’s Raid of Medicare Threatens Access to Care: President Obama recently strained credulity when he claimed that his planned cuts to Medicare, which total more than $700 billion in order to pay for a costly new entitlement program, “won’t touch your guaranteed Medicare benefits.”  Avik Roy of The Manhattan Institute highlighted the deleterious impact of those cuts on physicians opting out of accepting new Medicare patients and dryly noted that President’s assertion “only makes sense if you don’t count getting a doctor’s appointment as a ‘benefit.’”  Expanding on the issue of declining physician access, a recent piece for the National Center for Public Policy Research titled, “The Next Exodus: Primary-Care Physicians and Medicare,” concluded: “If enough primary-care physicians leave Medicare, it could eventually result in serious access problems for the program's beneficiaries. It would be especially difficult for those patients unable to pay for services out-of-pocket, most likely the elderly poor and the disabled.”