The “real” number of unemployed Americans is 22.7 million. These are people who are unemployed (12.0 million), want work but have stopped searching for a job (2.5 million), or are working part time because they can’t find full time employment (8.2 million).
In Montana and in my home state of Wyoming we know how important coal is to growing America’s economy. Coal provides affordable, reliable energy and good jobs.
President Obama and other Democrats in Washington should embrace this American energy source and look for ways to expand its production. Instead, they have been trying to shut down America’s coal industry.
President Obama knows that the Medicare program is on a swift path to bankruptcy. He admits it. Instead of proposing bipartisan solutions that reform and strengthen Medicare, the President chooses to do nothing.
If President Obama and Senate Democrats do not act, the federal government will begin taking more than half the value of family farm estates exceeding $1 million beginning next year. This summer, Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Democrats passed legislation (S.3412) on a party-line vote that allows Washington to take up to 55 percent, a huge increase over today’s top rate of 35 percent, and drop the tax’s exemption from $5.1 million to $1 million. The lower exemption -- combined with soaring farm real estate values -- could put more than 420,000 additional farm estates at risk from the death tax.
