Prayer Updates

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

President Obama Signals Middle Class Relief
Promising repeatedly to “keep fighting’’ for average Americans, President Obama rolled out proposals yesterday to help struggling middle-class families care for their children, save for retirement, and pay off college debts.   “Unfortunately, the middle class has been under assault for a long time,’’ President Obama told a gathering of his Task Force on Middle Class Families. “Too many Americans have known their own painful recessions long before any economist declared that there was a recession.’’  The proposals are part of broader themes that the White House said Obama would tie together in his State of the Union speech tomorrow night, including the importance of job creation, the need to reduce the deficit and, as ever, the urgency of changing the way Washington works.  His new proposals include nearly doubling the child and dependent-care tax credit for families making under $85,000 a year, and limiting a student’s federal loan payments to 10 percent of income above basic living allowance.  They would also require many employers to provide the option of direct-deposit access to a worker’s individual retirement account and would expand tax credits for retirement savings.

Pray for the President and his team in leading our country’s economy.  Pray for the millions of American families that are unemployed and facing financial hardships.

World Governments To Meet on Rebuilding Haiti
The United States will host an international conference at United Nations headquarters in early March to raise money to rebuild Haiti, where the local economy is slowly starting to show its first signs of life following the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake.  The impoverished Caribbean country will need foreign reconstruction money for the next five to 10 years, Haiti’s Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told representatives of 10 countries who gathered in Montreal Monday to map out the outlines of a long-term rebuilding effort.  Among the attendees were U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner. Haitian officials and those from other nations agreed that future aid should help Haiti diversify its economy away from the crowded capital Port-au-Prince and help provide people with more jobs in the countryside. A mass exodus of survivors from the quake-torn capital is already under way.

Pray for comfort for the families of those who have perished in Haiti.  Pray for shelter, food and water for all those displaced families.  Pray for physical and spiritual healing for the nation.  Pray for nations around the globe to join in an effort to rebuild the nation to support Haiti’s families.

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Prayer Updates

Monday, January 25th, 2010

President Obama Signs Haiti Relief Law
President Barack Obama on Friday signed into law a measure that speeds up tax rebates for Americans who donate to the Haitian earthquake relief effort.  The bill allows people to write off the donations on their 2009 tax returns.  The House and the Senate both passed the legislation this week after it was first crafted last Friday while the relief effort continues in the poor island nation.  Congress passed a similar piece of legislation in 2005 in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated much of the U.S. Gulf Coast.  The bill passed unanimously in both chambers of Congress.

Pray for comfort for the families of those who have perished.  Pray for shelter, food and water for all those displaced families.  Pray for physical and spiritual healing for the nation.

President Obama Endorses Deficit Commission
President Obama endorsed legislation yesterday that would create a bipartisan commission to develop a plan to address the nation’s soaring budget deficits.  Obama previously had urged that a presidential fiscal panel be created.  “We not only need to change how we pay for policies, but we also need to change how Washington works,” Obama said in a statement. “The only way to solve our long-term fiscal challenge is to solve it together — Democrats and Republicans.”  Obama’s decision to endorse a statutory fiscal commission comes just four days before his inaugural State of the Union speech, in which he is expected to address the fiscal problems.  The deficit reached $1.4 trillion last year and is expected to continue to be at or near that level this fiscal year and into the future.

Pray for the President and his team in leading our country’s economy.

President Obama Proposes Major Limits on Banks
As President Obama prepares for this Wednesday’s State of the Union address, jobs and the economy appear to be the big themes. Expected in the president’s first State of the Union address are echoes of his speech delivered Friday in Ohio in which Obama discussed the need to make the economy work for all Americans. That includes calls for including tax breaks for small businesses to hire and for Americans to make their homes more energy efficient, two items not itemized in the House Democrats’ $174 billion jobs package that passed in December.  “You’ll hear in the State of the Union, some of his ideas about additional steps that we can take to help create and stir hiring around the country,” said chief political adviser David Axelrod.

Pray for the millions of American families that are unemployed and facing financial hardships.

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Prayer Updates

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

President Obama Visits Ohio to Talk Jobs
Job growth is the focus as President Barack Obama visits Ohio’s Lorain County.  Today’s trip is the second stop on his “White House to Main Street Tour.” The first was last month’s visit to Allentown, Pa.  While in Ohio, Obama will tour a wind turbine plant and hold a town hall meeting at Lorain County Community College. That meeting will focus on rebuilding the economy in the long run.  Before heading home to Washington, the president plans to pay personal visits to local businesses and meet with workers.

Pray for the unemployed families in America who are facing economic hardships.  Pray for a recovery to our economy in America.

Former Presidents Bush and Clinton Work Together
Former President George W. Bush has teamed up with former President Bill Cllinton on a fundraising program they say is aimed both at helping Haiti recover from the January 12 earthquake and finally putting the battered country on a path to prosperity.  Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton are asking Americans to donate to the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund in a new TV spot released today by the Ad Council. The spot follows an Ad Council PSA with First Lady Michelle Obama supporting the Red Cross’ relief efforts.  The CBHF was created at the urging of President Barack Obama, who asked Presidents Bush and Clinton to help raise funds for the immediate and long-term recovery efforts in Haiti following last week’s earthquake.

Pray for healing of the injured, and comfort for the families  of those who lost their lives in Haiti.   Pray for strength and protection of rescue workers and doctors who have traveled to Haiti to help.

President Obama Proposes Major Limits on Banks
President Obama is turning his attention toward Wall Street. The President is imposing the “Volker Rule” on the nation’s banks.  According to the White House Statement, the proposal would:  1. Limit the Scope-The President and his economic team will work with Congress to ensure that no bank or financial institution that contains a bank will own, invest in or sponsor a hedge fund or a private equity fund, or proprietary trading operations unrelated to serving customers for its own profit.  2. Limit the Size- The President also announced a new proposal to limit the consolidation of our financial sector. The President’s proposal will place broader limits on the excessive growth of the market share of liabilities at the largest financial firms, to supplement existing caps on the market share of deposits.

Pray for the President and his team in leading our country’s financial markets.

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