Posted by William Jawando As I stood watching the Virginia State University drum-line perform in the White House this week (likely the first time an HBCU drum-line has ever perform ed at the White House), I was reminded of how far we have come as a nation and hopeful about where we are heading. The nation’s [...]
Posted by Robert Gibbs The President made the following statement on the earthquake in Chile and preparations for a possible tsunami that could reach American shores later today: Tsunami warnings are in affect for Hawaii, N. Marianas, American Samoa, Marshall and Solomon Islands. A tsunami advisory is in effect along the west coast of the [...]
Posted by Dan Pfeiffer On Thursday, Democrats and Republicans came together in the House to pass an emergency bill that will temporarily extend benefits for American workers and small businesses. It showed that in times of great need, our elected officials can still set aside their differences to do right by the American people. But [...]
Posted by Jesse Lee The President takes a moment to congratulate our Olympic athletes. Discussing the unity and pride Americans feel in cheering them on, the President relates that sentiment to his own desire for bipartisanship in Washington. He praises the recent bipartisan meeting and talks about moving forward on health reform.
Posted by Julia Eisman Cross-posted from the AIDS.gov blog. Approximately 200 people gathered on Wednesday to hear about progress on one of President Obama’s major initiatives—the National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS). This meeting provided an opportunity to update the public on the process for developing the Strategy, as well as current status and next steps. It allowed the White House [...]
Posted by Norm Eisen In September, the President announced that – for the first time in history – the White House would release visitor records. Today’s posting brings the grand total of records that this White House has released well over a 150,000 record milestone. You can view them all in our Disclosures section. These releases have [...]
Posted by Christina Romer and Mark Duggan As President Obama made clear at the bipartisan meeting on health insurance reform, and has emphasized all year, small businesses stand to gain substantially from his proposal for comprehensive health insurance reform. Small businesses are essential to the nation’s economy and its recovery from the recession. They are responsible for [...]
Posted by Jesse Lee Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s op-ed in the Washington Post today discusses the importance of providing direct student loans to help more poor and middle-class students attend college. He explains that under the current law, “working Americans pay while bankers get rich.” The banking industry is pushing against President Obama’s education proposal in [...]
Posted by Jared Bernstein & Terrell McSweeny Today, the Middle Class Task Force is proudly releasing our first annual report , which highlights the work we’ve done over the past year, and reaffirms the Administration’s commitment to fight for the middle class. The Task Force has traveled across the country to hear about the challenges facing American [...]
Posted by Dan Pfeiffer Ed. Note: Watch video of the meeting in our section on the President’s proposal. Today’s bipartisan health care meeting offered something you rarely see in Washington: an open, honest, productive discussion between the political parties. Leaders from across the political spectrum gathered at Blair House to exchange thoughts about an issue that touches all [...]
Posted by Patrick Corvington Imagine a problem facing a community — unemployment or homelessness, poverty or environmental degradation — and there’s a good chance a group of college students is finding a way to tackle it. At the Corporation for National and Community Service, we honor these students and their universities with the President’s Higher Education [...]
Posted by Macon Phillips Walking back to the White House to grab lunch after the morning session of the bipartisan meeting at the Blair House, the President stopped in front of the gate on Pennsylvania Avenue to answer a quick question about progress so far: Q. How is it going, Mr. President? THE PRESIDENT: It’s interesting. I [...]
Posted by Jared Bernstein Imagine you were trying to measure the size of an iceberg and you only considered the part above the water. You’d be missing most of the picture, right? That’s much like what happened in this story on the cost of construction jobs created by the Act. The article considers only the tip of [...]
Posted by Dan Pfeiffer If you’re watching the bipartisan healthcare meeting today, you’ve seen some people leaning on a talking point that premiums will increase under health care reform. Let’s be clear: our approach will lower costs for American families and businesses, and slow the growth of costs for the country as a whole. The non-partisan Congressional [...]
Posted by Kori Schulman We’re closer than ever to making reform a reality, and that’s why the President is hosting an open, bipartisan meeting to discuss Republican and Democratic ideas for making our health care system work better for the American people. The President has put forth a proposal that incorporates the work the House and the [...]
Posted by CIO Vivek Kundra In June 2009, we launched the IT Dashboard, which allows the American people to monitor IT investments across the Federal government. The IT Dashboard, which has received over 86 million hits, shines light into the operations of the Federal government. However, it is not enough to simply shine a light on IT [...]
Posted by Liz Oxhorn As the Recovery Act crossed the one year mark, newspaper editorial boards across the country took a good, hard look at the program and weighed in on its impact. From the St. Petersburg Times’ evaluation that “One year later, stimulus shows results in Florida” to the Philadelphia Inquirer’s verdict that “the stimulus [...]
Posted by Jesse Lee Today, President Obama gave a major address to the Business Roundtable to encourage cooperation from business leaders to promote economic recovery. “I want to spend most of my time talking about the specific steps we need to take to build this more competitive America,” he told them, ”But before I do, I want [...]
Posted by Cammie Croft Food desert? What’s a food desert? As part of Lets Move!, the campaign to end childhood obesity, First Lady Michelle Obama is taking on food deserts. These are nutritional wastelands that exist across America in both urban and rural communities where parents and children simply do not have access to a supermarket. Some [...]
Posted by Jesse Lee [UPDATE: This event has now concluded.] On Monday the President released his proposal to move forward on health reform that will finally put American families and small businesses in charge of their own health care. The President will bring the proposal to tomorrow’s bipartisan meeting on reform as a starting point for [...]
Posted by Jared Bernstein When it comes to keeping track of the score in Washington, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office is commonly considered to be as independent as they come. As one noted Republican Member of Congress said, CBO “speak[s] the truth to power here in Washington” and does “an important service by telling us the [...]
Posted by Jesse Lee In his press briefing today, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs announced another step to make sure our health care system works for the benefit of American families, not for the benefit of health insurance companies: [T]oday the President announced the administration’s strong support for repealing the antitrust exemption currently enjoyed by health insurers. At [...]
Posted by Jesse Lee Yesterday, President Obama and The First Lady hosted the National Governors Association in the State Dining Room at the White House. We thought we’d pass along some photos and excerpts from their remarks: President Obama: One of the things that I’ve always said about governors that Washington could learn from is that [...]
Posted by Tina Tchen On February 6, the White House Open Government Initiative launched a government wide public participation opportunity unprecedented in the history of our democracy. As part of the Open Government Directive issued in early December, every major agency published an open government website. These pages went live in early February complete with the latest news [...]
Posted by Victoria Espinel Hi, I am Victoria Espinel, the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator. I am honored to have been appointed by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve in this new position created by Congress in the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008. Given the unique [...]
Posted by Dan Pfeiffer The President believes strongly that Thursday’s bipartisan meeting on health insurance reform will be most productive if both sides come to the table with a unified plan to start discussion – and if the public has the opportunity to inspect those proposals up close before the meeting happens. That’s why yesterday the [...]
Posted by Jesse Lee Last week, tragedy befell public servants in Austin, Texas. Earlier today, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner met with IRS employees in Austin to express his sympathies and support, and he read this note from the President: To the men and women of the Internal Revenue Service at Austin: I asked Secretary Geithner to [...]
Posted by Jesse Lee Today is a good day for American consumers, as the credit card reform bill the President signed last year kicks in. We’re marking the occasion by holding a live online video chat through CreditCards.com with Austan Goolsbee of the Council of Economic Advisers at 2:00 this afternoon. Join the chat. You can get some [...]
Posted by Jesse Lee On Thursday the much-anticipated bipartisan meeting on health reform will be held at the Blair House across the way from the White House. With Congress having spent most of a year discussing and debating reform, the President put forward a proposal to work off of during the meeting to help lay out a [...]
Posted by Kori Schulman At 3:00 PM EST today the First Lady will give a group of Washington, DC music students a special preview of the 2010 Governors’ Ball performance. Grammy Award Winning artist, Harry Connick Jr. will spend some time talking to students and will close out the event with a song, joined by a few residents [...]
Posted by Dan Pfeiffer While almost everybody has heard health insurance horror stories from stories in the local paper, from somebody they know, or even somebody closer to home, it’s easy to think it won’t happen to us personally. In many cases we never even see the worst of insurance company abuses until we get sick ourselves. But [...]
Posted by Cammie Croft With Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack in tow, First Lady Michelle Obama traveled to Philadelphia yesterday as part of the Let’s Move! campaign, a nationwide effort to rally the country around one goal, ending the epidemic of childhood obesity. During her remarks at Fairhill Elementary School, Mrs. Obama applauded [...]
Posted by Jesse Lee The President points to outrageous premium hikes from health insurance companies, especially those already making massive profits, as further proof of the need for reform. Looking ahead to the coming bipartisan meeting on reform, the President urges members of Congress to come to the table in good faith to address the issue.
Posted by Jesse Lee During his visit to a town hall in Henderson Nevada, President Obama announced new efforts to stabilize the housing market by buying vacant homes and converting them into affordable housing that will create jobs, help the housing crisis, and allow the local economy to grow. He also announced a $1.5 billion fund for housing [...]
Posted by Secretary Kathleen Sebelius As families across the country struggle to make ends meet in this troubled economy, many are getting difficult news: their health insurance premiums are rising. Significantly. And a new report today indicates that premiums for seniors in Medicare Advantage plans will continue to rise. This is the continuation of an unfortunate [...]
Posted by Jesse Lee This Monday your relationship with your credit card is going to change a bit, as the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009 goes into full effect. The law bans unfair rate increases, prevents unfair fee traps, requires plain language in plain sight for disclosures, increases accountability all around, and institutes [...]
Posted by Arne Duncan At the beginning of the school year, the President encouraged students to take responsibility for their education, study hard and graduate from high school. That’s why the President and I are proud to announce the Race to the Top High School Commencement challenge. The challenge encourages schools to show how they are making [...]
Posted by Sarah Apsel Today, President Obama is announcing $1.5 billion in funding for innovative measures to help families in the states that have been hit the hardest by housing market stress and unemployment. States where house prices have fallen more than 20% from their peak will be eligible for this funding. Such price declines, coupled [...]
Posted by Jesse Lee First Lady Michelle Obama meets with British students, from schools across the London borough of Islington, in the Old Family Dining Room of the White House. The students, who won an Islington Black History Month essay competition, were rewarded with a trip to the United States sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in [...]
Posted by Liz Oxhorn Take a look at what independent economists and economic observers from across the political spectrum have had to say about the success of the Recovery Act on its one-year anniversary: Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Bank: “The stimulus worked,” said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Bank. Without it, “the unemployment [...]
