Despite high unemployment and the prolonged burden of lethargic economic growth, U.S. Congressional leaders are seeing their personal wealth rise. With unemployment at 9.1 percent and the private sector short on cash, everyday Americans desperately seek work, while those fortunate to have work suffer from benefit and wage cuts.

In a 51-47 vote, the U.S. Senate nixed a Democratic proposal to confiscate billions of dollars in tax breaks from some of the largest oil companies. Sixty votes were needed to push through Sen. Robert Menendez’s (D-N.J.) bill, which would have stripped billions in tax deductions from the "big five" oil companies, which includes BP, Exxon, Shell, Chevron, and ConocoPhilips.

President Obama benefits from a fundraising advantage that Republican presidential hopefuls can’t quite match: Access to the White House. According to an investigation by The Associated Press, over 60 of the President’s top campaign donors have attended the White House more than once for state dinners, holiday events, and meetings with top administration advisers.

President Obama’s reelection campaign reported Monday that it raised more than $45 million in February, a significant boost from the $29.1 million raised in January but far behind what it collected in February of 2008. "In February, 348,000 people donated to raise over $45 million for this campaign," read a tweet posted by the campaign. "Thank you."

Solyndra’s financial woes prompted White House officials to snub company executives from President Obama’s exclusive State of the Union box in January 2011, according to new e-mails released Friday. In May 2010, the President said that "companies like Solyndra" are the "true engine of economic growth," and in his 2010 State of the Union address, Obama claimed that the firm was "a California business that will put a thousand people to work making solar panels."

"Pool-mageddon" was avoided last Thursday, albeit temporarily, when a federal regulation requiring all public pools to install handicapped-accessible ramps and lifts was extended for 60 days. Falling under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), hotels and other organizations with publicly-accessible swimming pools could face a $100,000 fine for not complying with the rule. The regulation stems from amended rules under Title II and Title III of the ADA, which President Obama announced last July.

President Obama raised several hundred million dollars during the 2008 election, more than twice what Republican rival John McCain raised and a far cry more than any other U.S. President before him. The result? Obama’s fundraising achievements have ushered in a degree of crony capitalism Americans have quite possibly never witnessed before.

Along with a relaunch of the newly designed Breitbart.com, Andrew Breitbart's last column before his death was published Sunday, and it exposed the President in "a story that should swing the first hammer against the glass wall the mainstream media has built around Barack Obama." Entitled "The Vetting, Part I: Barack’s Love Song to Alinsky," the article busts open the lid on a controversial event that Obama attended in 1998: A play staged in Chicago, entitled The Love Song of Saul Alinsky, which championed the life and political ideology of the infamous Chicagoan "community organizer" Saul Alinsky.

As duplicative and wasteful federal programs go unreformed, a report published Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) affirms that the government is wasting "tens of billions of dollars" every year. According to the GAO, a nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, nearly every agency of the Executive Branch could use improvement.

Federal regulators are proposing more intervention in the U.S. automobile industry, as new safety regulations would require automakers to furnish all new vehicles with rearview cameras by 2014. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) will be transmitting a final copy of the proposed regulation to Congress today — which is expected to be approved — after the rule was originally proposed in 2010.