Jobs should be priority number one for the administration and Congress.  Health Care Reform won’t mean much if people still can’t afford any kind of health care because of a lack of a job.

WASHINGTON — President Obama presented a series of initiatives on Tuesday aimed at turning around the nation’s beleaguered job market, paying particular attention to increasing the hiring of small businesses by opening lines of credit and offering tax breaks to try to lower the double-digit unemployment rate.

“Even though we have reduced the deluge of job losses to a relative trickle, we are not yet creating jobs at a pace to help all those families who’ve been swept up in the flood,” Mr. Obama said. “There are more than 7 million fewer Americans with jobs today than when this recession began. That’s a staggering figure and one that reflects not only the depths of the hole from which we must ascend, but also a continuing human tragedy.”

The president outlined his proposals in a speech at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan research group not far from the White House. It was the latest in a series of speeches intended to focus attention on what his administration has done to improve the economic outlook, as well as what it plans to do in 2010, a crucial midterm election year in which the economy will be a central issue.

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