President George Bush and President-elect Barack Obama worked together last week to persuade Congress to release the second-half of the $700 billion that was approved in October by lawmakers for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).  After Mr. Obama personally lobbied Washington legislators on Tuesday, the Senate passed a vote on Thursday to release $350 billion of funds to the new president within 2 weeks.  Key Senate votes necessary to gain the bill's passage were obtained after the Obama team promised not to use the new funds to bail out troubled industries in the way the auto industry was saved last month (source: AP).   
 
Details on the economic stimulus plan first surfaced by President-elect Obama in late November were released last Thursday by House Democrats.  Initially described as a $500 billion package, the plan has now grown to $825 billion and may ultimately total more than $1 trillion.  The new president hopes to create and/or save 3-4 million jobs with the bill and is targeting mid-February 2009 for passage (source: AP).   
 
Ironically, the $825 billion price tag on last week's proposal exceeds the total stock market value of all the financial companies (e.g., banks and insurance companies) in the S&P 500 index.  Those 81 firms were worth $806 billion last Friday night (source: S&P).

 1.     OUT-OF-POCKET - Households pay 31% of total health care expenditures (e.g., prescription drugs, hospital care, physicians' costs, clinical services, nursing home care).  The remaining 69% is paid by businesses, insurance companies and governments (federal, state and local).  The data is from calendar year 2007 (source: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services).  
 
2.     NOT THE FIRST - One of President-elect Obama's campaign pledges is to implement universal health care, an effort first undertaken by President Theodore Roosevelt more than 100 years ago (source: Newsweek). 
 
3.     TAX WORK - IRS audits of individuals and businesses resulted in the payment of $1.1 billion of additional taxes per week in fiscal year 2008.  33 out of every 34 individual taxpayers making at least $200,000 were not audited by the government (source: Internal Revenue Service).   
 
4.     WORKING IN WASHINGTON - Barack Obama becomes the 44th President of the United States today.  His new administration is responsible for 7,840 appointees to fill government jobs.  85% of those appointees do not require Senate confirmation (source: Rocky Mountain News). 

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