A top White House economic adviser said Sunday that reducing the country’s 10 percent unemployment rate is essential to reining in the growing budget deficit.
Christina Romer, chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, also seems to be backing a House effort to pump an additional $75 billion in federal spending into the struggling economy. Ms. Romer said that “the sense that we need to do more is overwhelming.”
She noted that more jobs were lost in December after slight gains in November. Still, she said, the Obama administration sees a “continuing pattern of moderating job loss.”
Ms. Romer isn’t saying what she thinks the unemployment rate will be in the fall, when members of Congress face re-election.
Ms. Romer was interviewed on CNN’s “State of the Union” and ABC’s “This Week.”
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