Obama Unveils $3.5 Trillion Budget, Tax Cuts & Increases

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama has unveiled a $3.55 trillion spending plan for next year that would boost taxes on the wealthy and curtail Medicare to make way for a $634 billion down payment on universal health care.

In addition to sending Congress his budget for 2010, Obama on Thursday proposed a series of changes that would push spending to $3.94 trillion in the current year. That would result in a record deficit Obama projects will hit $1.75 trillion, reflecting the massive spending being undertaken to battle a severe recession.

As part of the effort to end the crisis, the administration proposed boosting the deficit by an additional $250 billion this year, enough to support as much as $750 billion in increased spending under the government's financial rescue program.

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667,000 new jobless claims; continuing claims top 5 million

WASHINGTON (AP) - The number of newly laid-off Americans seeking unemployment benefits rose far more than expected last week as employers cut thousands of jobs amid a deepening recession.

The Labor Department says first-time requests for unemployment benefits jumped to 667,000 from the previous week's figure of 631,000. Analysts had expected a slight drop in claims.

That's the highest level of initial claims since October 1982, though the labor force has grown by about half since then.

The number of people receiving unemployment insurance for more than one week also increased more than expected to 5.1 million. That's the fifth straight week the jobless benefit rolls have set a new record-high on data going back to 1967.

New-home sales tumble to record low pace in January

WASHINGTON (AP) - The government says new-home sales tumbled to a record-low annual pace of 309,000 in January as mounting damage from the collapsed housing market pushes the country deeper into recession.

The Commerce Department says that sales fell 10.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 309,000, the worst showing on records going back to 1963.

It also was a weaker showing than the pace of 330,000 that economists expected, and shattered the previous all-time monthly low set in September 1981.

(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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