WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 (UPI) -- A top economic adviser to President Barack Obama Sunday said U.S. unemployment will stay high for a while.
Austan Goolsbee, newly appointed chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, told ABC News "This Week" unemployment is "going to stay high. This recession is the deepest in our lifetimes, the deepest since 1929. If you take the people thrown out of work in the 1982 recession, the 1991 recession, the 2001 recession, not only is this bigger, this is bigger than all of those combined. So more than 8 million people lost their jobs. It's going to take a significant push on our part and time before that comes down. I don't anticipate it coming down rapidly."
U.S. unemployment was at 9.6 percent in August.
Goolsbee also rejected any quick compromise with Republicans on extending tax cuts for the top 2 percent of U.S. wage earners, although he said both parties could agree on an extension of tax cuts for the middle class. Both Bush administration measures are due to expire next year.
"The president has been all along ... quite clear on what I believe the economics is also quite clear, that borrowing $700 billion to extend tax cuts that average more than $100,000 a year to millionaires and even billionaires is the least effective bang for the buck we have," Goolsbee said. "He said we will be open for discussion, it was literally in a sentence where he said we should all be able to agree that what would give some certainty to the economy now would be extending the middle class tax cuts permanently. Let's talk about those other things after we do that."
