Jobs 

“Real” Unemployment Would Be 11 Percent If People Didn’t Stop Looking:  Although the most recent jobs report showed a drop in the unemployment rate, “real” unemployment would be much higher if so many discouraged Americans had not simply left the workforce because of the Obama economy.  As Ezra Klein of the Washington Post explains, “Since 2007, the percent of the population that either has a job or is actively looking for one has fallen from 62.7 percent to 58.5 percent.  That's millions of workers leaving the workforce, and it's not because they've become sick or old or infirm.  It's because they can't find a job, and so they've stopped trying... If 62.7 percent of the country was still counted as in the workforce, unemployment would be 11 percent.”

Spending

November Deficit $139 Billion:  Last week, CBO released its Monthly Budget Review for the month of November 2011.  The report showed that the monthly deficit totaled $139 billion or an average daily deficit of $4.5 billion.  The deficit in November was $12 billion less than it was in the same month last year.  The smaller deficit was due in part to the fact that revenues were up by $4 billion from the same month last year and spending was down by $8 billion.  Despite the slight improvement, deficits through the first two months of FY 2011 totaled $240 billion or $1.4 trillion on an annualized basis.  In President Obama’s first three years in office, deficits have averaged $1.33 trillion each year as compared to $250 billion under President Bush.  Average annual deficits are more than five times higher under President Obama than his predecessor.

 Medicare

Medicare Spends Too Much:  According to a recent Newsweek, “experts estimate that the United States spends hundreds of billions of dollars every year on medical procedures that provide no benefit or a substantial risk of harm, suggesting that Medicare could save both money and lives if it stopped paying for some common treatments.  ‘There's a reason we spend almost twice as much per capita on health care [as other developed countries] with no gain in health or longevity,’ argues Dr. Steven Nissen, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic.  ‘We spend money like a drunken sailor on shore leave.’"