Under the measure, the $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers would be lengthened by seven months and expanded with a $6,500 credit for some prospective homebuyers who already own homes.

The nearly 2 million people who have lost or are in danger of running through their unemployment benefits before the end of 2009 would receive up to 20 weeks in additional benefits.

For those in states with unemployment rates above 8.5 percent, it would grant an additional six weeks on top of that. The extension is the fourth since last June, and could give some people up to 99 weeks of unemployment benefits, above the previous record of 65 weeks set in the 1970s, according to the Associated Press.

More after the jump – Source The NewsHour

In figures released Thursday, the Labor Department said that first-time claims for jobless benefits fell by 20,000 to a seasonally adjusted 512,000.

“We know that when an economy recovers, the unemployment rate is one of the last numbers to rebound,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., according to the Washington Post. “So even as our economy begins to turn around, jobs are turning around slower, and it is our responsibility to ensure the out-of-work are not left out in the cold.”

The popular $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers, which was originally enacted in February as part of the $787 billion stimulus legislation, had been scheduled to run out at the end of this month.

The real estate industry has been pushing to extend and expand the housing tax credit. About 1.4 million first-time homebuyers have qualified for the credit through August, according to the AP.

The new legislation would also extend a $6,500 credit to homebuyers who have lived in their current home at least five years and want to buy a new one.

“This is probably the last extension,” said Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., a former real estate executive who has supported the credits.

The bill would also allow people whose businesses experienced losses in 2008 and 2009 to file for tax refunds on profits they had made in the past five years.

Monday on The American Experience: The 1930s:

Civilian Conservation CorpsIn March 1933, within weeks of his inauguration, President Franklin Roosevelt sent legislation to Congress aimed at providing relief for the one out of every four American workers who were unemployed.

He proposed a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) to provide jobs in natural resource conservation. Over the next decade, the CCC put more than three million young men to work in the nation’s forests and parks, planting trees, building flood barriers, fighting fires and maintaining roads and trails.

Corps workers lived in camps under quasi-military discipline and received a wage of $30 per month, $25 of which they were required to send home to their families. This program interweaves rich archival imagery with the personal accounts of CCC veterans to tell the story of one of the boldest and most popular New Deal experiments, positioning it as a pivotal moment in the emergence of modern environmentalism and federal unemployment relief.

The five-part series, “The 1930s,” draws parallels between our current age and the Great Depression era, examining the political and cultural life of America during one of history’s most tumultuous decades.

Learn more about the series and watch films online here.

More from PRX on this here

The full details and context for the show is here.

“The past,” as William Faulkner told us, “is not dead. It’s not even past.” The lessons of the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s are right in front of us, ready to be studied, analyzed, updated and applied to the present-day needs of the country.

If we’re serious about getting the U.S. back on track economically, we will have to take our heads out of the sand at some point with regard to the nation’s infrastructure. America has to be rebuilt, modernized and re-energized — from its water and sewer systems to its schools to the smart grid and the alternative energy sources that so many are talking about and beyond. That’s where the jobs are for the long term, and that’s the only route to a truly flourishing future.

These investments would be costly and require vision. Seeing them through would take an enormous collective effort by politicians and the public alike. But some variation on these themes is absolutely essential if the U.S. is to pull itself out of the economic quicksand and its long-term, potentially very tragic consequences.

If unemployment is a long term situation for millions of Americans – then most will lose their access to health care insurance – what does the individual do?

Here is WNED – Buffalo’s new series – Your Life, Your Money

You can watch the entire show or the parts that interest you the most – the POV is you!

A look at how home prices have fallen in Patchwork Nation’s community types shows how wide and varied the declines have been in the recession – and what they may mean for any recovery.

Some of the bigger drops have been in the community types that drive consumer spending. And the places at the other end of the home-price spectrum have the least amount of disposable income.

The price data, which come from Zillow.com, don’t include all US counties, and the statistics aren’t necessarily predictive of future economic performance. Still, they offer another warning that any climb out of the recession may be long and slow.

More here

His bottom line? Nothing has been fixed. We are spent out and therefore cannot spend our way out. That in the end we need structural change – We need greater equality in our society.