In the grip of recession, there was more grim news on the economy. At the end of a miserable year, more than 11 million Americans were unemployed, the Labor Department reported on Friday. President-elect Obama stepped up his campaign for Congress to quickly enact an economic recovery program. Senator Bernie Sanders has said at least $400 billion should be invested in each of the next two years to jolt the economy.

Unemployment The Labor Department announced that 524,000 Americans lost their jobs last month alone, raising the nation's unemployment rate to 7.2 percent in December, the highest level in 16 years. The unemployment rate was up from 6.8 percent in November and 5 percent last April. The economy lost 2.6 million jobs in 2008, the most since World War II ended. The 0.4 percentage jump in the official unemployment rate pushed the number higher than it had been since January of 1993.

Economic Recovery In a speech on Thursday at George Washington University, President-elect Barack Obama warned that the nation is sliding into the deepest economic crisis since World War II and urged Congress to pass a stimulus package quickly or risk an entire generation of Americans losing any hope of prosperity. Sanders spoke about standing up for working Americans with Representative Hilda Solis, President-elect Obama's nominee to runt the Department of Labor. To watch the exchange during Solis' testimony at her confirmation hearing before the Senate labor committee, click here.

Green Jobs Congresswoman Solis would be in charge of implementing the Green Jobs Act she helped shepherd through Congress. The Green Jobs Act in 2007 sponsored in the Senate by Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bernie Sanders was included in energy package. To read more about it in Grist, click here.

Wall Street Bailout A scathing new report by a congressional watchdog panel blamed the Treasury Department for failing to track how banks are spending taxpayer money provided through the government's $700 billion financial rescue package. The panel, led by Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Warren, said in its report that it "still does not know what the banks are doing with taxpayer money." By investing in banks that have refused "to provide any accounting of how they are using taxpayer money," the Treasury Department has "eroded" public confidence, the report stated. The panel also department took no steps to use any of the $700 billion rescue package to alleviate the foreclosure crisis, raising questions about whether Treasury has complied with the law. "I'll be perfectly blunt with you, I'm shocked that we have to ask these questions, but what I will say is I'm not giving up on this," Warren told ABC News.

Health Centers Tom Daschle, the person in charge of the Obama administration's quest to overhaul the nation's health care system, on Thursday told former Senate colleagues that the task was more urgent because many people were losing health insurance along with their jobs. Sanders asked Daschle if he would support quadrupling the number of community health centers to save money by diverting people from emergency rooms and reducing the need for hospitalizations. "I'm with you and would be very excited about the prospect of a partnership," the former South Dakota senator added at the first confirmation hearing for an Obama cabinet nominee. "The sooner we can get it done the better." Sanders plans soon to reintroduce his legislation on health centers. The same bill in the last session of Congress was cosponsored by Obama as well as by health committee chairman Edward Kennedy and others. To watch the exchange between Sanders and Daschle at the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee, click here.

Digital TV Obama asked Congress to postpone the federally mandated switch to all-digital broadcast television scheduled for Feb. 17. A delay would give the government time to fix a consumer-help program that ran out of money in the past week. "I applaud the decision to delay the transition to digital television," Sanders said. "The incompetence of the Bush administration means that if we had gone ahead with the switch on February 17, not only would millions of Americans not have gotten the coupons they were promised on time, but millions of Americans would find themselves with no television reception or fewer channels." Sanders first broached the idea of delaying the transition in a Sept. 19 letter to Kevin Martin, the Federal Communication Commission chairman. "A delay of the DTV transition date is… something I believe should be contemplated. Americans should not be forced to pay for cable, satellite, or other telecommunications video services to get their free broadcast channels because the government did not properly plan for this transition."