Jobs

Another Green Loan Recipient Halts Solar Energy Production, Lays Off Workers: Last month, U.S. solar-power firm Abound Solar announced that it will stop making solar panels while it retools a Colorado factory. Abound Solar has drawn down about $70 million in federal loans to date and has now laid off 280 employees while delaying plans to open a new factory in Indiana that was also part of the government-backed deal. The announcement was the latest failure for a manufacturing company backed by the Department of Energy’s loan guarantee program, which has already lost more than $500 million on loans to failed California solar panel maker Solyndra LLC.

Spending

Three Years After $1 Trillion Stimulus, Unemployment Worst Since Great Depression: February 2012 marked the third anniversary of the president’s failed $1 trillion stimulus and also the 37^th consecutive months that the unemployment rate has been at or above 8 percent. The level at which the Obama Administration claimed unemployment would be today if the “stimulus” was signed into law was 6 percent. Before president Obama took office, unemployment had not been above 8 percent for 37 consecutive months since the Great Depression.

Medicare

IPAB Must Go says National Minority Quality Forum:  In a March 1st press release, the Forum argues “the clear intent of the law is to insulate IPAB [Independent Payment Advisory Board] and its decisions from the full range of traditional democratic checks and balances.  This is unwise and unwarranted.  Instead of this draconian measure, we must pursue an integrated and practical approach to improving our nation’s health care system…The National Minority Quality Forum urges Congress to abolish the Independent Payment Advisory Board.”