White House Week

This week, the White House released a video message from President Obama welcoming the Lunar New Year:



On Thursday, the Council of Economic Advisers released the 69th-annual Economic Report of the President, which reviews the United States’ accelerating recovery and ways to further support middle-class families as the recovery continues. The economy is recovering from the Great Recession at an increasing pace, growing at an annual rate of 2.8 percent over the past two years, compared with 2.1 percent over the first three-and-a-half years of the recovery. The speed-up is especially clear in the labor market, where job gains have reached a pace not seen since the 1990s. But it is essential that a broad range of households benefit from the United States’ resurgent growth, so this year’s Report focuses on factors that are important to middle-class incomes: productivity, labor force participation, and income inequality. The President’s approach to economic policies, what he calls “middle-class economics,” aims to improve each of these long-standing elements and ensure that Americans of all income levels share in the accelerating recovery.

Read the report here. 

Links of the Week

This week I've been reading...

Face to Face with Janet Street Porter

Women matter on the economy

President Obama and the First Lady meet with Malala

The Gardens of Downton Abbey

White House Week

Official White House Photo

This week, President Obama delivered a speech marking five years since the financial crisis. Small business owners, construction workers, homeowners, consumers and tax cut recipients joined the President at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building for his speech. The Obama Administration has prepared a report that describes fifteen key elements of the response to the financial crisis and where we find ourselves today. You can view the report here. 

Senior staff from the White House have also shared their thoughts from the time when key decisions regarding the economy needed to be made. This makes for fascinating reading, and you can find out more here. 

President Obama also delivered remarks on the tragic shooting at Washington DC's Navy Yard:

"I’ve been briefed by my team on the situation.  We still don’t know all the facts, but we do know that several people have been shot, and some have been killed.  So we are confronting yet another mass shooting -- and today, it happened on a military installation in our nation’s capital.

It’s a shooting that targeted our military and civilian personnel.  These are men and women who were going to work, doing their job, protecting all of us. They’re patriots, and they know the dangers of serving abroad -- but today, they faced unimaginable violence that they wouldn't have expected here at home.

So we offer our gratitude to the Navy and local law enforcement, federal authorities, and the doctors who’ve responded with skill and bravery.  I’ve made it clear to my team that I want the investigation to be seamless, so that federal and local authorities are working together.  And as this investigation moves forward, we will do everything in our power to make sure whoever carried out this cowardly act is held responsible.

In the meantime, we send our thoughts and prayers to all at the Navy Yard who’ve been touched by this tragedy.  We thank them for their service.  We stand with the families of those who’ve been harmed.  They’re going to need our love and support.  And as we learn more about the courageous Americans who died today -- their lives, their families, their patriotism -- we will honor their service to the nation they helped to make great.  And obviously, we're going to be investigating thoroughly what happened, as we do so many of these shootings, sadly, that have happened, and do everything that we can to try to prevent them."

The Department of Health and Human Services released a report on Obamacare. HHS estimates that, under the Health Insurance Marketplace launching on October 1st, nearly 6 out of 10 uninsured Americans could get low-cost, high-value health insurance for under $100 per person per month. Find out more at Healthcare.gov.