A recent report by the National Employment Law Project says nine states qualify for $876 million in unemployment benefits. The money would be available for people unemployed longer than 12 weeks. Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming have turned down money from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009. In [...]

If any doubt exists about whether President Obama gets the message that the American public wants him to put revitalizing job growth at the top of his priority list, the last two weeks should surely put them to rest. Even as the White House was forced to turn much of its attention to the crisis [...]

the Senate passed an extension of unemployment insurance, not only the decent thing to do but one of the most effective ways to boost our economy, as Lawrence Summers, Chair of the National Economic Council, explained. The President has pressured the partisan minority holding it up relentlessly on behalf of those who desperately needed the [...]

It’s also a pretty good summary of what the president himself was up to as he spoke to the nation on Tuesday night. The speech came at a critical juncture in his presidency. He has begun to recover from the depths of voter dissatisfaction he hit last fall, but he faces a newly empowered GOP [...]