The federal report out Friday on January’s employment data contains good news — including for President Obama’s chances at re-election.

But, despite the addition of 243,000 new jobs last month and another drop in the nation’s unemployment rate, many — not even all of whom are political opponents of the president — see a long way yet to go.

“Today’s jobs report is encouraging, but we should judge it against the overall sluggishness of the economic recovery and a persistently large jobs deficit that remains after 23 straight months of private-sector job creation,” says Chad Stone, chief economist at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a Washington think tank which has supported many of Obama’s initiatives. “Payroll employment is still 5.6 million jobs short of where it was at the start of the Great Recession in December 2007, there are four jobless workers for every job opening, and long-term unemployment remains at an historic high level.”

Ted Ellis, mayor of Bluffton, Ind., and president of the National League of Cities, wants Washington to take further action to create more jobs.

“We continue to urge our national leaders to take a page from our local officials. They must stop their partisan bickering and start working quickly,” Ellis says. “The American people need Washington to get to work on making the investments -– like infrastructure -– that will put all our people back to work and make the country economically competitive for decades to come.

“To everyone in Washington we say it again: Campaign on your record and not with people’s lives. It’s time to get to work,” Ellis adds.

Obama included increased federal spending on infrastructure as part of his overall American Jobs Act but Senate Republicans blocked action on those provisions.

Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future, a Washington progressive policy shop, quoted Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke saying, “We still have a long way to go before the labor market can be said to be operating normally. Particularly troubling is the unusually high level of long-term unemployment.”

‘True Casualties of Wall Street’s Excesses’

Borosage notes that nearly one-third of the unemployed have been out of work for a year or more.

“These are the true casualties of Wall Street’s excesses,” he says. “American companies are producing more now than they did before the collapse. But Americans aren’t sharing in the rewards. Profits margins are at record heights; CEO salaries have soared, but there is no recovery in jobs, and wages and benefits continue to fall behind.”

There’s nothing in Friday’s jobs report to deter Congress from moving quickly to enact extensions either for Obama’s middle-class payroll tax cut or unemployment insurance (UI) through the end of the year — without cutting benefits or imposing new barriers to receiving benefits, according to CBPP’s Stone.

“The recovery still needs a boost, and besides giving critical support to unemployed workers, unemployment insurance is one of the highest bang-for-the-buck boosters that policymakers have in their arsenal,” he says. “Under current law, however, the provision of additional weeks of emergency UI to workers who exhaust their regular UI benefits (after 26 weeks in most states) and the payroll tax cut that policymakers enacted at the end of 2010 are scheduled to expire at the end of this month, contributing to [the Congressional Budget Office's] dim view of near-term economic growth. The President and Congress must extend them through the end of the year.”

Scott Nance is the editor and publisher of the news site The Washington Current. He has covered Congress and the federal government for more than a decade.Икони на светци

A protest group is urging President Obama to revoke permission to Bank of America that allows it to transfer risky assets to its federally insured unit.

A group organizing protests distinct from, but similar in spirit to, Occupy Wall Street is denouncing permission granted by the Obama administration to allow Bank of America’s holding company to transfer risky derivative assets from Merrill Lynch to its federally insured bank.

The New Bottom Line — a coalition of small business, community and faith organizations — wrote President Obama, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Acting Chairman Martin Gruenberg — to demand that permission for the deal be revoked.

Bank of America, which acquired Merrill Lynch in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown, itself received a $45 billion taxpayer-funded bailout. The bank, which holds more than $1 trillion in deposits, is the second-largest in that regard.

The decision by federal regulators once again allows a troubled financial institution to transfer risk onto American taxpayers, according to the New Bottom Line, which targeted Bank of America last month in a Boston protest. Bank of America last month was hit with a downgrade of its credit.

The risk is that taxpayers will be left holding the bag if the transferred assets become worthless, the organization contends. The New Bottom Line called the move “a back-door bail-out” of Bank of America.

The New Bottom Line also notes that Bank of America has foreclosed on hundreds of thousands of homes of struggling U.S. homeowners.

Any federal assistance to Bank of America must be contingent on a “clear set of strict requirements aimed at helping the American people and the economy,” the organization says in its letter to the president.

Among other conditions, the New Bottom Line tells Obama that Bank of America must stop financing pay day and other predatory loan products.

Scott Nance is the editor and publisher of the news site The Washington Current. He has covered Congress and the federal government for more than a decade.