David Leonhardt writes an excellent column on the “dangerous experiment” the world’s biggest economies are conducting by cutting back spending sharply at the beginning stages of a recovery, and risking the choking off of it. He’s right to mention the late 1930s, when Roosevelt backed off on his New Deal programs and tried to cut [...]

The Senate leadership thinks it has found a package that can move to break the logjam on unemployment extensions, a $34 billion dollar measure that would extend (but not add a new tier of) jobless benefits for six months, through the end of November 2010. There would be retroactive benefits added for those who have [...]

Nancy Pelosi, in an interview with the Huffington Post, warned about the threat of a double-dip recession without continued support for the economy. This isn’t a random fatalistic econo-blogger, but the Speaker of the House. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Friday that if Congress fails to reauthorize extended unemployment benefits and other domestic aid [...]

In a depressing briefing with reporters, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) charged that Republicans basically are holding back measures to extend unemployment insurance and create jobs in a cynical ploy to help their chances in November by crashing the economy and blaming the Democrats for it. At issue is the large tax extenders/jobs bill, which has [...]

There’s a cloture vote scheduled today on the tax extenders bill in the Senate. It doesn’t look like it’ll pass. Bernie Sanders couldn’t get a repeal of fossil fuel subsidies into it last night to help pay for it, so the usual suspects are choking on the cost. And Senators on the Democratic side are [...]

Yesterday, Harry Reid filed cloture on the tax extenders bill which the Senate has been working on since they came back from the Memorial Day recess. Typically, that means that the majority has the votes to cut off debate. But that may not be the case here. Doctors are sending white lab coats to Washington [...]

Larry Summers, of all people, told Congress to pass the “Promoting American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act,” which he telegraphed is as close as we’re going to get to a second stimulus for the rest of the year. The Obama administration made a strong plea to Congress on Monday to grit its teeth and [...]

The President’s message on the monthly jobs numbers actually offered some hope that he would press for some needed steps to keep the economic recovery going. But we still have more to do. In my State of the Union address, I called for a $30 billion small business lending fund, which would help increase the [...]

The House has taken their cues from the Senate Majority Leader’s “jobs agenda” and will probably round out the year with multiple minor measures aimed at creating jobs. Yesterday they passed two of them. First, they passed a small business and infrastructure bill that would spend about $18 billion dollars, subsidizing more state-based Build America [...]

The unemployment numbers released at the end of the week are likely to be the best of the Obama Presidency. They may even show an increase in jobs for the first time since 2007. US manufacturing activity clocked in at a four-year high today. The GDP report is bound to be solid as well, at [...]

Over in the House of Representatives, which has passed the stimulus and a decent budget, along with climate, health care, education and financial reform legislation, they are trying to finish off a shockingly productive year with an additional jobs bill that does a fair bit of good: The House plans to vote later today on [...]