The federal government’s report that the nation added 200,000 last month only puts fresh pressure on congressional Republicans to do more to help the struggling U.S. economy, and struggling jobless Americans in particular, according to many both in and out of the Obama administration.

The Labor Department released employment data Friday, which also found the national unemployment rate dropped to 8.5 percent, its lowest level in three years.

Despite the hope that the news represents, it also points out that more must be done, many say.

In all, employers created nearly 2 million private-sector jobs during 2011, according to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis.

“We’ve now created more than 3.2 million jobs over 22 consecutive months of private sector growth,” she says. “But our hard-won progress cannot be compromised. Congress wisely extended Unemployment Insurance benefits and the payroll tax cut for two months, but if we’re going to see our economy reach a self-sustaining path to durable and long-term economic growth, Congress will need to extend both programs for at least a full year.

“The American public has spoken loud and clear that it rejects the political gamesmanship that has created uncertainty for businesses around the country,” Solis adds. “Congress should do the right thing and extend middle class tax relief and Unemployment Insurance benefits through 2012 to keep our economy on the path to full recovery.”

Economists estimate that the nation will have to create more than 350,000 jobs per month -– for the next three years –- to get the unemployment rate down to 6 percent, according to Roger Hickey, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future, a progressive Washington policy organization.

December’s figure of 200,000 jobs created means that the economy is barely growing at the rate needed to keep up with the growth of the labor force, Hickey says. The fact that the unemployment rate has declined to 8.5 percent has got to mean that many more people have become so discouraged that they stopped looking for work — and thus are not counted as part of the labor force, he adds.

“The US needs 4 to 5 percent growth to replace the 5.2 million jobs lost since 2007 and to keep up with new people who need jobs. But most forecasters predict that our economy will be lucky to grow at 2 or 3 percent this year,” Hickey says.

“Clearly, if we don’t want to stay stuck at high levels of unemployment –- and the growing inequality that comes with stagnant growth — our government needs to take stronger steps to create jobs,” he adds. “Instead, Republicans in the Congress are still threatening to remove stimulus from the economy by blocking extension of unemployment benefits and continuation of President Obama’s middle-class tax cuts. Today’s report will add public pressure on Republicans to renew those policies before the two-month temporary extension expires next month. But we have to do much more than continuing last year’s modest stimulus. Americans need to pressure their representatives to take advantage of record low interest rates to invest in public infrastructure, energy conservation and renewables, and education. These are investments our economy needs to make anyway –- and if we make them now, we can create enough jobs to escape today’s way-too-modest levels of growth and move our country to full employment.”

Curtailment of Unemployment Benefits

Chad Stone, chief economist at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, particularly worries about the future of unemployment benefits for the more than 13 million out-of-work Americans.

“The job market is nowhere near healthy enough yet to justify a sharp curtailment of federal emergency unemployment insurance (UI) benefits, which give critical support not only to the record numbers of long-term unemployed workers but to the economy as well,” Stone says. “Yet that’s what will happen if, in the coming legislation to renew UI and the payroll tax cut for the rest of this year, policymakers include harmful provisions of the payroll-tax bill that the House passed last month.”

Along with sharply curtailing the number of weeks of benefits, the House bill contained various “reforms,” some of which would undermine UI’s fundamental purpose since its establishment in the 1930s — to provide temporary financial assistance to workers who lose their jobs through no fault of their own while they search for a new job, Stone says. For example, the bill would deny UI benefits to all workers who lack a high school diploma or GED certificate and are not enrolled in classes to get one — even though employers paid UI taxes on these workers’ wages — and those taxes effectively came out of these workers’ wages.

It also would allow states to drug-test all UI applicants and condition eligibility on the results — a standard not used for other federal programs ranging from farm price supports to tax subsidies.

“Such provisions should have no place in legislation to extend UI and the payroll tax cut through the end of 2012,” Stone argues.

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.

Dear Father Christmas,

As a mythological being, I yet see your handiwork every year, see your representatives dressed as that Marketing Demigod, Santa Claus, see him on television and in movies, in print and hear him on the radio.

As such, you are the PERFECT person for me to address my plea to.

You see, Father Christmas, what I really want and need for Christmas is something that is even more mythological than you. I think you’ll understand when you read this:

GOP wins light bulb fight

By DARREN SAMUELSOHN | 12/15/11 9:37 PM EST

Politico

The shutdown-averting budget bill will block federal light bulb efficiency standards, giving a win to House Republicans fighting the so-called ban on incandescent light bulbs.

GOP and Democratic sources tell POLITICO the final omnibus bill includes a rider defunding the Energy Department’s standards for traditional incandescent light bulbs to be 30 percent more energy efficient.

DOE’s light bulb rules — authorized under a 2007 energy law authored signed by President George W. Bush — would start going into effect Jan. 1. The rider will prevent DOE from implementing the rules through Sept. 30….

Or this:

With the Plan B decision, the Obama administration broke its promise

By Susan F. Wood, Published: December 9

I resigned from the FDA in 2005 after serving for five years as assistant commissioner for women’s health. I left because of my frustration that this safe and effective emergency contraceptive pill, Plan B, had been repeatedly blocked from going on sale over the counter. It was clear to me at the time that the recommendations of all the medical and scientific experts, both inside and outside the FDA, were being overruled by ideology, to the detriment of women and limiting their access to medicines…

Or this:

December 14th, 2011 05:29 PM ET

FIRST ON CNN: Obama, Dems drop millionaire surtax to pay for payroll tax cut

Posted by CNN Congressional Correspondent Kate Bolduan

(CNN) – In what would be a major concession, President Obama and Senate Democrats will drop their insistence that a surtax on millionaires pay for extending the payroll tax cut, a Democratic source tells CNN. This would be part of a new Democratic offer.

The move comes after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and other top Senate Democrats met with President Obama at the White House earlier today.

And now this:

GOP Threaten to Harm the Economy If Obama Won’t Embrace Tar Sands Pipeline

By Joe Romm on Dec 16, 2011 at 5:16 pm

GOP Threaten to Kill Tax Relief and Unemployment Extension Over Keystone XL Pipeline, Which Won’t Improve Energy Independence or Create Many Permanent Jobs

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said today he will not support a payroll tax cut extension if he is not allowed to shoot this dog (or at least the climate the dog lives in) TPM reported today. Apologies to “National Lampoon” and canine aficionados. (original caption)

By Kate Gordon and Daniel J. Weiss in a CAP repost

As Congress attempts to finish its 2011 work, the House leadership continues to push hard to speed up the permitting process for the Keystone XL pipeline. Today Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) threatened to add a Keystone provision to a two-month extension of the payroll tax cut, scheduled to expire on December 31. Boehner told reporters:

These rumors that are floating around here about a two-month extension, I’ll just say this: If that bill comes over to us, we will make changes to it, and I will guarantee you that the Keystone pipeline will be in there when it goes back to the United States Senate.

Ironically the State Department said Monday that such legislation would prevent it from approving the Keystone permit …

So, in short, Father Christmas, what I’d like (and what millions of us would like) is a mythological Vertibrate Democrat.

You don’t have to actually produce an actual, honest-to-gosh Vertibrate Democrat. I’d happily settle for a Mythic Vertibrate Democrat that exists at the same level as you do, Father Christmas: A mythological creature that inspires adults and children, who does good deeds through his innumerable proxies, and who won’t actually eat the milk and cookies we set out in the living room on Christmas Eve.

You know, like Mickey Mouse.

It’s a tall order, I know, Father Christmas, but I have to ask somebody, and you are the only mythological being that I know to ask, ever since the Religious Right claimed Baby Jesus® as a registered trademark.

Merry Christmas.

Your ardent admirer,

Hart Williams

PS: If you DO want to eat the milk and cookies, I won’t mind at all. I’m just sayin’.

Courage.

================

A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.

Calling them “callous,” a prominent labor leader denounced House Republicans for their approach to extending unemployment benefits to jobless Americans.

The GOP-led House voted Tuesday to extend emergency unemployment insurance beyond the end of the year for Americans, but only after also cutting and restricting the benefits.

“It’s bad enough that Republicans blocked bills to create jobs, but now they cut unemployment benefits for people who can’t find work,” says Jim Hoffa, general president of the Teamsters labor union. “People can’t ‘just get a job’ when there are four unemployed people for every job opening.”

Meanwhile, independent Washington analysts also criticized the Republican approach as both unfair and potentially bad for the overall U.S. economy.

The House voted to extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance (UI) beyond the Dec. 31 expiration date. However, the bill cuts unemployment benefits by 40 weeks, requires recipients to have a high school diploma or GED and charges them for re-employment services. Republicans insisted on these cuts.

“Our economy will continue to stall unless we put money in the pockets of people who will spend it,” Hoffa says. “This is a callous move by House Republicans, who apparently don’t care if America’s middle class disappears.”

Unemployment, now at 8.6 percent, has exceeded 8 percent for nearly three years, the longest since the government began keeping records in 1948.

The National Employment Law Project estimates that the cuts in the House bill would cost $22 billion in lost economic growth and 140,000 fewer jobs next year.

The changes to the unemployment-insurance system approved by the House would not only make it harder for workers who lose their jobs through no fault of their own to qualify for benefits, but also make the system more costly to administer, according to an analysis by from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a Washington think tank.

The “punitive elements” of the House Republican bill “imply that unemployed workers aren’t looking hard enough for a job and that too many of them are eligible for UI in the first place,” the CBPP analysis says.

“In reality, there are about four jobless workers for every available position, so even if every available job were filled by an unemployed worker, nearly 10 million people would still be unemployed,” it says. “Moreover, unemployed workers already must satisfy numerous requirements to claim UI benefits; largely as a result, only about 40 percent of the unemployed in a normal labor market receive UI.

“Today’s economic conditions, plus forecasts that unemployment will remain high for at least the next two years, justify continuing federal emergency UI as it is currently,” the CBPP analysis says.

Some 40 percent of unemployed Americans have been looking for work for over six months, a larger share than at any time in the last 60 years prior to the current downturn, the analysis finds.

Further, CBPP concurs that cutting unemployment insurance would take needed cash out of the U.S. economy at a time when it needs it. The analysis cites the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which says UI benefits represent the biggest “bang-for-the-buck” to keep the economy moving.

Tuesday’s House vote sets up a likely confrontation with the Senate, where the Democratic majority has advocated for an extension of unemployment benefits free from the cuts and restrictions imposed by the House bill.

WATCH VIDEO OF SENATE MAJORITY LEADER HARRY REID CRITICIZE OTHER ASPECTS OF THE HOUSE LEGISLATION HERE:

Click here to view the embedded video.

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.

While the U.S. economy added 120,000 net new jobs in November and the nation’s unemployment rate fell dramatically, to 8.6 percent, those figures don’t tell the whole story, according to one Washington economist.

The seemingly robust job creation numbers that the federal government released Friday in its monthly employment data still aren’t enough to sustain a real drop in unemployment. Also, the economy would have added another 20,000 jobs in November except that many government workers were laid off — mostly from local governments.

Indeed, the rosy-looking drop in the national unemployment rate isn’t in reality good news at all, says Chad Stone, chief economist at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), an independent think tank.

“The drop in the unemployment rate to 8.6 percent arises from people leaving the labor force, not from a fundamental improvement in job prospects,” he says.

The labor force shrank by 315,000 people in November, accounting for a substantial share of the decline in the number of unemployed, Stone says.

The economy remains sluggish and “calls for aggressive federal action,” he says.

Congress must renew the emergency unemployment insurance benefits and payroll tax cut that are set to expire at the end of this year, Stone says. Those extensions are caught in Republican obstructionism, however.

Enacting President Obama’s American Jobs Act would be useful because its proposals would boost economic growth and employment significantly in 2012 and 2013, Stone says.

But the economic stimulus with the biggest “bang-for-the buck” would be an extension of unemployment benefits for the nation’s jobless, he adds.

“Letting federal emergency unemployment benefits expire at the end of this year would not only be cruel to unemployed workers and their families, but would also weaken the recovery by reducing their capacity to buy goods and services in an economy that is already suffering from weak aggregate demand,” Stone says.

It remains very difficult to find a job.

The Labor Department’s most comprehensive alternative unemployment rate measure -— which includes people who want to work but are discouraged from looking and people working part time because they can’t find full-time jobs —- was 15.6 percent in November, down only modestly from its all-time high of 17.4 percent in October 2009 in data that go back to 1994, according to Stone. By that measure, over 24 million people are unemployed or underemployed.

More than two-fifths (43 percent) of the 13.3 million people who are unemployed -— 5.7 million people —- have been looking for work for 27 weeks or longer, he says. These long-term unemployed represent 3.7 percent of the labor force. Prior to this recession, the previous highs for these statistics over the past six decades were 26 percent and 2.6 percent, respectively, in June 1983.

“Ideally, Congress would enact a program like the President’s to give the economic recovery an additional boost and increase the likelihood that we can start to see the sustained job growth of 200,000 to 300,000 jobs or more a month to make real progress in reducing the unemployment rate,” Stone says. “At a minimum, lawmakers must not hobble the recovery further by letting the $150 billion of purchasing power –- roughly 1 percent of GDP -– represented by the payroll tax cut and emergency unemployment insurance disappear from households’ budgets, which will occur if they do not renew those programs.

The Obama administration made the same argument Friday.

“”Personal income and consumer spending are both up. Americans are showing more confidence in the economy. Now it’s incumbent upon Washington to give them confidence in our government to solve our biggest challenges and put millions of Americans back to work. This is a strong report, but we can’t forget those Americans who lost their jobs during the recession and are still struggling.

“We know what has worked: extending payroll tax cuts and unemployment insurance, and making smart investments in our economy. The clock is ticking,” says Labor Secretary Hilda Solis. “If Congress doesn’t extend emergency unemployment benefits for our long-term unemployed this month, 5 million Americans will lose their benefits next year. These are the everyday heroes of our recovery who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own. They spend all day, every day filling out applications, sending out resumes and looking for work. Now is not the time to turn our backs on them. They deserve better. They deserve action.

“Congress must act immediately to extend emergency unemployment benefits and payroll tax relief,” Solis adds. “We must pass these measures this month to continue the positive trends we’re seeing in today’s report.”

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.

Senate Republicans who have been intensely devoted to tax cuts may find themselves this week on record in support of a big tax hike on the middle class.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced Monday plans to consider a bill to extend President Obama’s payroll tax cut which benefits 160 million American workers. Without an extension, those tax breaks will expire at the end of the year, however.

Sen. Bob Casey’s legislation not only would continue the existing 2-percent payroll tax cut for employees into next year, it would boost it to a 3.1-percent break. The legislation would also cut in half (from 6.2 percent to 3.1 percent) the employer-side Social Security payroll taxes, Democrats say.

Democrats also are quick to note that the extension of the payroll tax cut would not hurt the Social Security Trust Fund one penny, because it would require that the Social Security Trust Fund be reimbursed for the lost revenue.

The extended tax cuts also would not add to the budget deficit because they would be paid for with a 3.25-percent surtax on income over $1 million. It is that millionaire surtax, in which a wealthy taxpayer who makes $1.1 million would pay $3,250 more in taxes, which is likely to raise GOP ire.

Reid also surmises Republican opposition to the extension is due to partisanship because the payroll tax cut originally was President Obama’s idea.

“These are the same Republicans who loudly claim to care about keeping taxes low. But too often it seems they only care about keeping taxes low for the richest of the rich,” Reid says.

Reid anticipated Republican objection to the bill, and sought to tweak Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell a bit by noting that the average family in McConnell’s home state of Kentucky would keep $1,330 next year under the expanded payroll tax break. And 70,000 firms in Kentucky would benefit from new tax cuts, as well, Reid says.

“So let’s be clear what a ‘no’ vote on this proposal really means. It’s a vote to deny tax relief to millions of businesses. It’s a vote to raise taxes for 120 million families by nearly $1,000 each,” Reid adds. “Republicans who vote ‘no’ will literally be taking money out of the pockets of middle-class taxpayers.”

Reid cites economist Mark Zandi of Moody’s who predicts the U.S. economy will likely plunge back into recession if Congress does not extend this tax cut.

“It is clear neither our fragile middle class nor our fragile economic recovery can afford the kind of setback a failure to extend and expand these tax cuts would bring,” the majority leader says. “Republicans say we cannot afford to raise taxes. If they choose to oppose this payroll tax cut, we’ll know what they meant to say was, ‘We cannot afford to raise taxes on the rich –- but we are happy to raise taxes on the middle class.’”

UPDATE: In an interview with Bloomberg Television, Barclays analyst Michael Pond warns that letting the payroll tax cut expire could damage the economy by causing a drop in GDP of up to 1.5 percent.

WATCH VIDEO HERE:

Click here to view the embedded video.

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.