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The Obama Administration's top economic officials suggested this past weekend they would consider an extension of unemployment benefits set to expire later this year.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said while the economy is starting to turn around, private economists' predictions that unemployment rates would not start to fall until the second half of next year. Secretary Geithner and other Administration officials have predicted the national unemployment rate may not peak until the second half of 2010.

Representative Jim McDermott, (D-WA) chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, introduced HR 3404 late last week to keep extended unemployment benefits running through December 31, 2010, instead of expiring as scheduled at the end of 2009. The bill would extend the following programs:

• Emergency Unemployment Compensation or EUC, which provides up to 33 weeks of extended benefits to workers exhausting their regular unemployment benefits.
• Extended Benefits or EB, which provides 100% federal funding for up to 20 weeks of benefits in high unemployment states.
• An additional 13 weeks of EUC benefits in states with a three-month average total unemployment rate of at least 9 percent or an insured unemployment rate of at least 6 percent.