In his recent state of the Union address, President Obama said, “inequality has deepened, upward mobility has stalled. The cold hard fact is that even in the midst of recovery, many Americans are working more than ever just to get by, let alone ahead. And too many aren’t working at all.”

According to the Commander in Chief, the United States is lagging economically.

With hopes of change, President Obama then declared, “I believe this could be a breakout year for us.”

Statistics of our nation’s wealth do support this. America’s economy seems to be moving forward.

According to a New York York Times article published on January 28^th  by Nelson Schwartz, “the economy grew by 3.2 percent in the final quarter of 2013, echoing the even stronger 4.1 percent pace of expansion in the summer months, and providing the White House with a rare bit of good news despite dismal public approval ratings.”

The economy of the United States is expanding at a slow pace. Recently, unemployment has decreased, but still sits at 6.7%, a full two points above when Bush and Clinton were at this point in their presidencies.

While this is true, the Bush and Clinton administrations did not see the same downturn our economy has faced in the past 5 years.

Ellen B. Zetner, Senior U.S. Economist at Morgan Stanley was quoted in a January 30^th Times article by Schwartz stating, “the United States economy is at an inflection point. The recovery is just now beginning to look like what a normal recovery looks like. We’ve been in no man’s land.”

To expedite this progress, President Obama called for the minimum wage to be raised to $10.10 per hour.

When asked to comment on the issue of a raised minimum wage, Charles McCullagh, the CFO of Williston, stated “I would want anyone earning wages at the minimum wage level to receive more money so they can meet their personal needs. My concern is that, given the cautiousness businesses now exercise post ‘Great Recession,’ one reaction to a minimum wage increase might be that businesses will reduce the number of employees rather than keep the same number of employees. That would be a sad result to an otherwise well-intentioned effort to improve the lives for workers earning wages at that level.”

Mr. McCullagh commented on how Williston has fared the economic downturn, saying that “when the Great Recession hit in 2008-09, most non-profit institutions like Williston saw charitable contributions slow down a bit. However, the economy has been recovering, albeit slowly. With that, there has been a rekindled interest on the part of donors to support the charities they care about. Williston has seen this improvement.”

Mr. McCullagh continued, saying “regarding enrollment, Williston experienced a small reduction to the total number of students during the most challenging years right after the Great Recession hit, but currently enrollment at Williston is at its highest level in many years.”

Mr. McCullagh also agrees that America is on the road to recovery. “There is growth, however it happens to be that this growth is slow, but it shows the ability for the American economy to recover from one of the more devastating financial events in history. While I do not see a catastrophe occurring, there are some serious problems that need to be addressed. The level of unemployment not reducing, the national debt of the US government, the cost of health care in America, the ineffectiveness of the legislative and executive branches of the federal government.”

With Obama proposing to fix some of the issues Mr. McCullagh brought to light, America could be on its way back up. There is a lot that would need to fall into place, a nation simply cannot raise the standard amount of earning and hope for the best.

While Mr. McCullagh is encouraged, the American economy still has a ways to go. The January 30^th, article by Schwartz states that “despite giving President Obama credit for helping steer the country out of the recession, economists say he still faces an uphill battle to burnish his economic legacy before he leaves office in early 2017.”