Jobs

Unemployment Would be 40% Higher if Americans Were Looking for Work:  The percentage of able Americans working or even looking for work fell to a 30-year low of 63.7 percent in January 2012.  If the labor force participation rate were at the same level today as it was before the recession started, unemployment would actually be 11.4 percent as opposed to 8.3 percent. Because a smaller percentage of Americans are looking for work since Obama became president, a smaller percentage is classified as unemployed.  If millions of Americans had not given up looking for work, the unemployment rate would be 40 percent higher.

Spending

Three Years After “Stimulus”—$1 Million Spent for Every Job Lost:  February 17^th 2012 marked the 3^rd anniversary of the president’s failed $1.2 trillion “stimulus” bill (CBO estimates the cost of the stimulus will reach $825 billion and interest on the debt for the stimulus will be at least $347 billion). The complete failure of the president’s stimulus is difficult to comprehend. With 1.1 million net jobs lost since the stimulus was enacted (at a total cost of $1.172 trillion), the stimulus spent more than $1 million for every job America lost since it was enacted.

Medicare

Premium Support vs the President’s Law:  In a February Heritage Foundation WebMemo titled “Medicare Premium Support:  The Best Reform Option,” authors Bob Moffit and Rea Hederman explain “Medicare premium support sharply contrasts with President Obama’s approach, which relies almost exclusively on huge Medicare payment reductions to finance other entitlement expansions, creates a powerful Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) to make further detailed and specific payment cuts, and imposes new layers of red tape on doctors and other medical professionals.”