House moving to extend unemployment insurance as Obama states, "unemployment a problem for one more year"

The House in Congress is moving to extend unemployment benefits, further:

A bill offered by Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., and expected to pass easily would provide 13 weeks of extended unemployment benefits for more than 300,000 jobless people who live in states with unemployment rates of at least 8.5 percent and who are scheduled to run out of benefits by the end of September.

The 13-week extension would supplement the 26 weeks of benefits most states offer and the federally funded extensions of up to 53 weeks that Congress approved in legislation last year and in the stimulus bill enacted last February.

People from North Carolina to California "have been calling my office to tell me they still cannot find work a year or more after becoming unemployed, and they need some additional help to keep their heads above water," McDermott said.

This is a tough one. There are no jobs, not in the future horizon. Are green jobs coming? Yes, I think so, but the fact is there are none here in abundance, yet, and this is going to be a problem going down the road for the Obama Administration. This talk of the "recession is over" is pretty bogus when the jobless numbers are atrocious.

President Barack Obama says he expects unemployment will be a "big problem" for at least another year.

Speaking during taping of "The Late Show" with David Letterman, Obama called the $787 billion economic stimulus program that Congress enacted earlier this year a "tourniquet" that stopped the economic bleeding. Without that spending, he said another 1.5 million jobs, or more, would have been lost.

But Obama said it's going to take time for the economy to become whole again. As he put it, "Unemployment is going to be a big problem for at least another year." The nation's unemployment rate hit 9.7 percent in August. Most economists expect it to top 10 percent next year.

Unemployment a big problem for another year, well, congress keep the unemployment checks FLOWING.

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