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The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts that Obama’s budget plans would generate deficits over the upcoming decade that would total $9.8 trillion. That’s $1.2 trillion more than predicted by the administration.

The agency says its future-year predictions of tax revenues are more pessimistic than the administration’s. That’s because CBO projects slightly slower economic growth than the White House.

The deficit picture has turned alarmingly worse since the recession that started at the end of 2007, never dipping below 4 percent of the size of the economy over the next decade. Economists say that deficits of that size are unsustainable and could put upward pressure on interest rates, crowd out private investment in the economy and ultimately erode the nation’s standard of living.

Still, the Feb. 1 White House budget plan was a largely stand-pat document that avoided difficult decisions on curbing the unsustainable growth of federal benefit programs like the Medicare health care program for the elderly and Medicaid, which provides health care to the poor and disabled.

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Moneynews – Congressional Report: Deficit Will Be Much Worse Than Obama Says.

Including that so-called jobs bill.

Leo Hindery, a Huffington Post blogger who the event’s moderator (and HuffPost blogger) Steve Clemons identified as a “former hard-driving Republican CEO”, mocked the bill’s emphasis on tax breaks.

“I have never hired a man or a woman based on a tax credit,” Hindery said.

Employers hire when they are certain they will have a growing market for their products — and they don’t have that certainty now, Hindery explained.

As for the bill’s emphasis on incentivizing small and medium-sized businesses, Hindery said: “I can’t fix Dayton, Ohio” that way. “We have to have a large-business orientation,” he said. “You’ve got to go after this with big ideas and transformational ideas.”

“We have to come up with a non-belligerent equivalent of the kind of economic shock produced by World War II,” said Huff Post blogger Robert Kuttner, who is editor of the American Prospect and author of the upcoming book: “A Presidency in Peril: The Inside Story of Obama’s Promise, Wall Street’s Power, and the Struggle to Control our Economic Future”.

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Job-Creation Advocates Say Obama Just Doesn’t Get It.

The bill, passed by a 62-36 vote, is the latest job creation effort to go before lawmakers, though it contains virtually no new initiatives to boost employment. Its price tag has wavered between $140 billion and $150 billion, which is partially offset. Its next stop is the House, where a quick passage is anything but assured.

Lawmakers have come under pressure from both the White House and unemployed Americans to do more to spur hiring. But after many speeches, officials have enacted little to help the nearly 15 million looking for work.

The latest efforts — which include a $15 billion job creation initiative that the Senate will take up next — don’t sit well with members from either side of the aisle. Some say that more must be done to boost employment. Others, particularly Congressional Republicans, have voiced concerns about adding to the deficit.

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Senate passes $140 billion bill extending jobless claims – Mar. 10, 2010.

Despite Obama’s bold promises, unemployment remains stubbornly high. But job losses have slowed dramatically.

And the nation’s recent economic growth is real, even though the government has spent just one-third of the massive stimulus plan. The program_ originally estimated at $787 billion but now priced at $862 billion — is to continue pumping federal money into the economy into 2011.

One year into the program:

• Many states and local governments owe their fiscal survival to the stimulus. But those governments are scrambling to find ways to fill the holes in the coming year.

• Thousands of road and bridge projects broke ground with stimulus money, helping to keep the anemic construction industry afloat. But job losses still were significant, with as many as one in four construction workers unemployed.

Obama used Wednesday’s one-year anniversary to offer his own assessment and, predictably, rated the effort an unprecedented success.

“There has never been a program of this scale, moved at this speed, that has been enacted as effectively and as transparently as the recovery act,” the president declared.

But the legacy of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is yet to be sealed.

FOR CONTINUATION OF THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK FOR YAHOO! NEWS: Judging stimulus: Jobless rate high, growth real – Yahoo! News.

Still, with millions still out of work and losing patience, Obama acknowledged that to them, “It doesn’t yet feel like much of a recovery.”

Marking the anniversary of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Obama aimed his message at people skeptical about the expensive relief measure and Republican lawmakers who voted against it and continue to hammer him about it.

To the public, Obama explained, as he has many times before, that the stimulus plan was composed of tax cuts for most Americans along with help for state governments, extended social service benefits and huge investments in energy, education and infrastructure.

“One year later, it is largely thanks to the recovery act that a second depression is no longer a possibility,” Obama said.

To his Republican critics, who say the bill was a costly, debt-financed blunder that has not delivered on the promise of job creation, Obama challenged them to take up the case with people who have stayed employed or have found help solely because he and the Democratic-run Congress acted.

FOR CONTINUATION OF THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK FOR YAHOO!/AP: Obama says stimulus bill saved troubled economy – Yahoo! News.

Reporting from Washington – Experts fear that a new wave of foreclosures will hit this year as prolonged unemployment makes it difficult for millions of homeowners to pay their mortgages — and many of them aren’t likely to get much help from a federal program aimed at keeping them in their houses.

Banks participating in the Home Affordable Modification Program, announced a year ago this week by President Obama, have been slow to turn temporarily reduced mortgage payments into permanent ones.

“The overarching sense is that the mortgage modification process has not worked that well,” said Bert Ely, an independent banking consultant.

Obama administration officials acknowledge that the $75-billion program, which offers banks cash incentives to reduce payments, has had growing pains, and they said they were considering revisions to make it more effective.

Still, the program is expected to show continued progress when data from January are released Wednesday after a strong push by Treasury Department officials to get banks to make more of the modifications permanent.

FOR CONTINUATION OF THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES: New wave of foreclosures by end of 2010 is feared – latimes.com.

When employers hire temporary staff after a recession, it’s long been seen as a sign they’ll soon hire permanent workers.

Not these days.

Companies have hired more temps for four straight months. Yet they remain reluctant to make permanent hires because of doubts about the recovery’s durability.

Even companies that are boosting production seem inclined to get by with their existing workers, plus temporary staff if necessary.

“I think temporary hiring is less useful a signal than it used to be,” says John Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo. “Companies aren’t testing the waters by turning to temporary firms. They just want part-time workers.”

The reasons vary. But economists and business people say the main obstacle is that employers lack confidence that the economic rebound has staying power. Many fear their sales and the overall economy will remain weak or even falter as consumers spend cautiously.

Companies also worry about higher costs related to taxes or health care measures being weighed by Congress and statehouses. That’s what Chris DeCapua, owner of employment firm Dawson Careers in Columbus, Ohio, is hearing from clients.

FOR CONTINUATION OF THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK FOR YAHOO! Use of temps may no longer signal permanent hiring – Yahoo! Finance.

The accumulated debt already amounts to roughly $40,000 per person.

The debt increase, approved 217 to 212, is only enough to keep the government afloat for about another year as it borrows more than 40 cents of every dollar it spends.

The budget is more than $3.7 trillion this year, and the deficit is approaching $1.6 trillion under the budget submitted by President Obama this week.

Democratic leaders devised the increase, to $14.3 trillion in the cap on federal borrowing, to ensure that the rank and file will not have to vote on another increase before the November midterm elections, when they will face voters who are angry over government spending and debt.

Passage of the bill sends it to Mr. Obama, who will sign it to avoid a first-ever default on United States obligations.

Thirty-seven Democrats, mostly from Republican-leaning districts, voted against the measure. So did all Republicans, even though they routinely supported increases in the borrowing cap when their party controlled Congress or when George W. Bush was president.

FOR CONTINUATION OF THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK FOR NEW YORK TIMES: House Allows Debt to Rise $1.9 Trillion – NYTimes.com.