Lawmakers on capital hill won't return for another week, which means some people reading this post right now realize they won't be collecting an unemployment check for awhile.
Before they broke for Easter a week and a half ago, Congress was at an impasse on a $9.3 billion, 30-day extension that Democrats supported, but Republicans said it should be paid for. Democrats said the bill's cost didn't need to be offset because the program was "emergency spending."
Asked about that yesterday on CNN's State of the Union with host Candy Crowley , Larry Summers, the White House top economic aid, went toe to toe on the topic:
“Unemployment insurance, a basic protection for people who have been laid off through no fault of their own, cut off because our politicians are not able to agree on a formula for extending it? That's not how our government should be working.”
Boosted by the Labor Department's report on Friday morning that showed the U.S. economy gained 162,000 jobs lst month the largest seasonally adjusted in nonfarm payrolls in three years, White House economic officials were able to puff their chests out just a bit (metaphorically speaking) on the Sunday morning talk shows.
On ABC's This Week, Summers confidently told host Jake Tapper that he expects job creation to accelerate and Congress to approve financial reform legislation. But unemployment is still high.
TAPPER: Where do you think we're going to be in September? Are we going — are we going to still be at 9.7 percent unemployment or is it going to go down a little?
SUMMERS: You know, the — the good news is that, if you look at what's happened in the first quarter of this year, it's hardly satisfactory, but it is running somewhat ahead of what the administration was forecasting, because our forecasts were conservative. And I'd expect continued progress in job creation.
As you see progress in job creation, you tend to see unemployment go down. It's not quite as simple as some people think, Jake, because as conditions get better, more people decide to look for work and are counted as in the labor force. So sometimes it's frustrating and the progress doesn't show up immediately in the unemployment rate, but it's progress nonetheless in giving jobs to people who need them.
This article appears in Mar 31 – Apr 6, 2010.