Jobs 

Unemployment Above 8 Percent for 35 Months:  Unemployment (8.5 percent in December) has now been above 8 percent for 35 consecutive months in the Obama economy, the longest span since the Great Depression.  From March 2009 (the month after the failed $1.2 trillion “stimulus” was enacted) through December 2011, unemployment has averaged 9.4 percent.  Three years ago, the Obama Administration said that unemployment would never reach 8 percent if the “stimulus” was approved. 

Spending

Republicans Succeed In Cutting Discretionary Spending for the Second Straight Year:  For the first time since the drawdown following World War II, House Republicans were able to cut non-emergency discretionary spending for two consecutive years with the passage of the FY 2012 appropriations funding bill (H.R. 2055 Conference Report).  According to the House Appropriations Committee, the government will have saved nearly $31 billion in total discretionary spending compared to last year’s level and $95 billion compared to FY 2010, which was the last year Democrats controlled Congress.

Medicare

Dems Earn Politifact High Honor:  As reported in the Tampa Bay Times, Poltifact has awarded “lie of year” (2011) honors to the Democrats’ false claim that “Republicans voted to end Medicare.”  No less than nine times PolitiFact debunked the Medicare charge with fact-check ratings of “False” or “Pants on Fire.”  According to the article, “the Democratic attack about ‘ending Medicare’ was a pervasive line in 2011 that preyed on seniors' worries about whether they could afford health care…. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, an expert on campaign advertising who directs the Annenberg center at the University of Pennsylvania, says ‘Democrats have been using falsehoods and exaggerations about Medicare and Social Security since at least 1952.’  She calls it the longest-running ‘Democratic deception.’”