1115.org

Americans’ personal savings rate dipped into negative territory in 2005, something that hasn’t happened since the Great Depression. Consumers depleted their savings to finance the purchases of cars and other big-ticket items.

The Commerce Department reported Monday that the savings rate fell into negative territory at minus 0.5 percent, meaning that Americans not only spent all of their after-tax income last year but had to dip into previous savings or increase borrowing.

Millions of poor people would have to pay more for health care under a budget bill worked out by Congress, and some of them would forgo care or drop out of Medicaid because of the higher co-payments and premiums, the Congressional Budget Office says in a new report.

As this EPI study details, subtract out the government-funded jobs, mostly due to the defense sector, and NO net jobs have been added under Bush’s watch. So that means tax cuts have accomplished ZILCH in encouraging private sector job creation. It’s all increased government spending.

According to government statistics, 38 million Americans live in households that suffer from hunger or food insecurity. The number of hungry mouths has increased by 43 percent in the past five years, according to the Department of Agriculture.

The United States is the only developed country with a serious hunger problem, and more than 12 million of those affected are children.

Primary care — the basic medical care that people get when they visit their doctors for routine physicals and minor problems — could fall apart in the United States without immediate reforms, the American College of Physicians said on Monday.

The amount of assets frozen by U.S. anti-terrorism units is declining dramatically each year, prompting a former Bush administration official who helped oversee the program to suggest that a “lack of urgency” is hurting efforts to block terrorist fundraising.
“This strategy is an important component of the overall anti-terror strategy,” says Jimmy Gurule, a former Treasury Department undersecretary for enforcement. “What I’ve witnessed is very, very disturbing.”

Nearly five months after Hurricane Katrina swamped New Orleans, President Bush’s lofty promises to rebuild the Gulf Coast have been frustrated by bureaucratic failures and competing priorities, a review of events since the hurricane shows.

While the administration can claim some clear progress, Bush’s ringing call from New Orleans’s Jackson Square on Sept. 15 to “do what it takes” to make the city rise from the waters has not been matched by action, critics at multiple levels of government say, resulting in a record that is largely incomplete as Bush heads into [the] State of the Union address.