Last week, I had the pleasure of kicking off the first ever Department of Education National Transition Conference. More than 700 students, educators, advocates and other leaders came together to work on improving transition services for students with disabilities.  

This conference, part of a Department of Education initiative called “The Year of College and Careers,” will help young people with disabilities reach their full potential. It will forge new partnerships among federal, state and local officials, as well as private entities and community leaders. Over the next year, the Department of Education and partner agencies will be providing more information and making announcements regarding this new effort.

The President is fully committed to this endeavor because he understands that supporting Americans with disabilities is not just about a set of principles or a set of programs. This is about people. 

As part of our focus on women’s health, the White House and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) would like to invite you to participate online in a Women’s Health Town Hall on Thursday, June 7, 2012. The event will be streamed live from the White House and the HHS websites from 10 am to 11:30 am ET. 

The event will be an interactive, open dialogue about how the health care law, the Affordable Care Act, is improving the health of women and their families. 

Do you know how the law affects you, your mother, and your daughter? Here are some highlights:

• The law requires insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions, and means the end of women being denied or charged more for coverage just because they’re women.
• It also zeroes in on ensuring access to preventive services like mammograms and blood pressure screenings by making them available without a co-pay.
• It strengthens the Medicare program by cracking down on fraud, waste and abuse and closing the prescription drug gap known as the “donut hole,” which means lower prescription drug costs for all seniors.

The gender wage gap puts women at a career-long disadvantage. In 2011, a typical 25-year-old woman working full-time all year earned $5,000 less than a typical 25-year-old man. In just 10 years, her cumulative lost wages will reach $34,000. If that earnings gap is not corrected, by the age of 65 years, she will have lost $431,000 over her working lifetime. 

This substantial gap is more than a statistic -- it has real life consequences. When women, who make up nearly half the workforce, bring home less money each day, it means they have less for the everyday needs of their families, and over a lifetime of work, far less savings for retirement.

President Obama supports passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act, which Congress puts to a vote on June 5. This comprehensive and common sense bill updates and strengthens the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which made it illegal for employers to pay unequal wages to men and women who perform substantially equal work.  

On a call today, the President talked about the impact of paycheck inequality on American families: “We've got to understand this is more than just about fairness.  Women are the breadwinners for a lot of families, and if they're making less than men do for the same work, families are going to have to get by for less money for childcare and tuition and rent, small businesses have fewer customers.  Everybody suffers.  .”

You can learn more about the Paycheck Fairness Act, and check out some e-cards that explain how income inequality affects American families here.

Ed Note: This post is updated with a correction on HUD borrower savings as those figures have not yet been finalized.

President Obama is committed to a regulatory approach that protects public safety and welfare while also promoting economic growth and job creation. In January 2011, the President issued a historic Executive Order, setting forth new cost-saving, burden-reducing requirements for federal regulations, and requiring an ambitious government-wide “lookback” at existing regulations. In response to that requirement, over two dozen agencies identified more than 500 reforms. Agencies have already proposed or finalized more than 100 of them.

On May 10, we announced a series of final rules that will save nearly $6 billion over the next five years. Other rules, now proposed or finalized, will produce billions of dollars in additional savings, producing total savings in excess of $10 billion from just a small fraction of the reform initiatives.

Also on May10, the President institutionalized his regulatory lookback with an historic Executive Order requiring federal agencies to continue to scrutinize rules on the books to see if they really make sense. That Executive Order takes three new steps. To promote priority-setting, the Order requires agencies to identify reforms that will produce significant quantifiable savings, especially (but not only) for small business. To promote accountability, the Order requires agencies to report to the public regularly on their past efforts and their future plans -- with details and deadlines. To promote public participation, the Order directs agencies to obtain public comments to see which rules should be simplified, improved or repealed.

Here's a quick glimpse at this week on WhiteHouse.gov:

The Nation’s Heroes: This Monday the President, Vice President, First Lady, and Dr. Biden traveled to the Arlington National Cemetery where the President laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns. He then spoke to the families gathered there, asking that we remember the fallen soldiers for the people they really were, “One thing we can do is remember these heroes as you remember them -- not just as a rank, or a number, or a name on a headstone, but as Americans, often far too young, who were guided by a deep and abiding love for their families, for each other, and for this country.”

The President then made his way to the Vietnam Veterans memorial to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam  War. There he spoke of the service that the veterans undertook for America, both in war and once they returned home, “Like generations before you, you took off the uniform, but you never stopped serving.  You became teachers and police officers and nurses -- the folks we count on every single day.  You became entrepreneurs, running companies and pioneering industries that changed the world.  You became leaders and public servants, from town halls to Capitol Hill -- lifting up our communities, our states, our nation. You reminded us what it was like to serve, what it meant to serve. “

Extraordinary People: On Tuesday the President awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, to 13 extraordinary individuals. These people came from all walks in life, ranging from a doctor to a musician, the President said that each has made his or her mark on America, “Together, the honorees on this stage, and the ones who couldn’t be here, have moved us with their words; they have inspired us with their actions.  They’ve enriched our lives and they’ve changed our lives for the better.  Some of them are household names; others have labored quietly out of the public eye.  Most of them may never fully appreciate the difference they’ve made or the influence that they’ve had, but that’s where our job comes in.”

The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression didn’t develop overnight, and it won’t be solved overnight. But while we have a long way to go, over the past 27 months, American companies have added more than 4.3 million jobs. Behind that number are countless small businesses – entrepreneurs with bold ideas and a willingness to dream big. 

President Obama knows that small business owners are the engines of our economy. That’s why he has signed 18 new small business tax cuts into law. As our country continues to recover from the worst recession since the Great Depression, we must continue to support and celebrate America’s job creators. 

That’s why StartUp America, the Council on Women and Girls and the White House Business Council have put together an interactive tool to introduce you to some of the women entrepreneurs who are helping our country succeed. Some of these small business owners are on the cutting edge of social media, advanced manufacturing and biotechnology. Others have opened traditional “main street” establishments, such as stores and restaurants. All of them have created jobs, and made their communities better places to work and live. 

It's 2012, but did you know that women are still paid less than men?

On average, full-time working women earn just 77 cents for every dollar a man earns, a wage gap that exists regardless of personal choices like education or occupation. Over the course of her career, a woman with a college degree will earn hundreds of thousands of dollars less than a man who does the same work.  

This substantial gap is more than a statistic -- it has real life consequences. When women, who make up nearly half the workforce, bring home less money each day, it means they have less for the everyday needs of their families, and over a lifetime of work, far less savings for retirement.

President Obama supports passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act, which Congress puts to a vote on June 5. This comprehensive and commonsense bill updates and strengthens the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which made it illegal for employers to pay unequal wages to men and women who perform substantially equal work.  

We’ve created some ecards that you can send via email or share on social media with reasons equal pay for equal work is essential. Pick your favorite, or send them all!

Problems in the job market were long in the making and will not be solved overnight. The economy lost jobs for 25 straight months beginning in February 2008, and over 8 million jobs were lost as a result of the Great Recession.  We are still fighting back from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. 

Today we learned that the economy has added private sector jobs for 27 straight months, for a total of 4.3 million payroll jobs over that period. The economy is growing but it is not growing fast enough. BLS’s establishment survey shows that private businesses added 82,000 jobs last month, and overall non-farm payroll employment rose by 69,000. The unemployment rate ticked up from 8.1 percent in April to 8.2 percent in May, according to BLS’s household survey. However, the labor force participation rate increased 0.2 percentage point to 63.8 percent, and employment rose by 422,000 according to the household survey. 

There is much more work that remains to be done to repair the damage caused by the financial crisis and deep recession that began at the end of 2007. Just like last year at this time, our economy is facing serious headwinds, including the crisis in Europe and a spike in gas prices that hit American families’ finances over the past months.  It is critical that we continue the President’s economic policies that are helping us dig our way out of the deep hole that was caused by the severe recession. 

In the American Jobs Act and in the State of the Union Address, the President put forward a number of proposals to create jobs and strengthen the economy, including proposals that would put teachers back in the classroom and cops on the beat, and put our nation’s construction workers back on the job rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure.  The President has also proposed a “To-Do List” of actions that Congress should take to create jobs and help restore middle-class security.  This includes eliminating tax incentives to ship jobs overseas, cutting red tape so responsible homeowners can refinance, giving small businesses that increase employment or wages a 10 percent income tax credit, investing in affordable clean energy, and helping returning veterans find work.  The President is in Minneapolis today to announce a new executive action that will establish private sector partnerships to help military service members acquire recognized occupational credentials—as welders, as machinists, and ultimately in a broader range of occupations. These partnerships will help service members find private sector jobs once they leave the military, and they will help firms in manufacturing and other industries that need workers to fill their vacant positions. 

Manufacturing employment continues to expand and manufacturers added 12,000 jobs in May. After losing millions of good manufacturing jobs in the years before and during the recession, the economy has added 495,000 manufacturing jobs since January 2010--the strongest growth for any 28-month period since April 1995.  To continue the revival in manufacturing jobs and output, the President has proposed tax incentives for manufacturers, enhanced training for the workforce, and measures to create manufacturing hubs and encourage the growing trend of insourcing. 

Other sectors with net job increases included education and health services (+46,000), transportation and warehousing (+35,600), wholesale trade (+15,900), and temporary help services (+9,200). Construction lost 28,000 jobs, accounting services lost 14,000 jobs, government lost 13,000 jobs, and leisure and hospitality lost 9,000 jobs.  State and local governments shed 8,000 jobs, mostly in education. 

As the Administration stresses every month, the monthly employment and unemployment figures can be volatile, and employment estimates can be subject to substantial revision.  Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report and it is helpful to consider each report in the context of other data that are becoming available.