January 2013

Welcome to America, where half the nation lives right on the razor’s edge. A shocking new report out of the Corporation for Enterprise Development, finds that 44% of Americans are just one financial shock away from complete ruin. Nearly half the nation doesn’t have enough savings to keep them out of poverty for more than 3 months, should they suffer a job loss, an accident, a sickness, or other financial shock.

For the first time since 2009, the U.S. economy shrank last quarter. New numbers out of the Commerce Department, show that the economy shrank in the fourth quarter of 2012 by point-1 percent. That’s a complete reversal from the robust 3.1% growth rate, which we saw in the third quarter of 2012.

The Obama administration is considering its next move, after a panel of three Republican-appointed judges on a DC Circuit Court ruled last week, that President Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were unconstitutional.

With President Obama set to tackle immigration reform on Tuesday, a group of bipartisan Senators came out today with their own compromised deal. The team of four Democrats and four Republicans introduced a plan that will put the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants, currently in the United States, on a path to citizenship.