I suppose this is good news ("good" meaning "less horrible"), but most of the new jobs added are in health care, or they're temp jobs. As we saw the other day, businesses are sitting on huge piles of cash but refusing to hire permanent employees:

After losing eight million jobs since the recession began in December 2007, payrolls finally surged in March, the Labor Department reported on Friday. Employers added 162,000 nonfarm jobs last month. Nationwide, the unemployment rate held steady at 9.7 percent.

“We are beginning to turn the corner,” said President Obama, speaking in Charlotte, N.C., calling it “the best news we’ve seen on the job front in more than two years.”

Though everything seems to be moving in the right direction, he was careful not to raise expectations too high. “It will take time to achieve the strong and sustained job growth that we need,” President Obama said.

The economy needs to add more than 100,000 jobs a month just to absorb new entrants into the labor market, let alone provide a livelihood for the 15 million Americans already looking for work. Without constant, robust growth, the unemployment rate won’t budge. Indeed, the Congressional Budget Office has projected that the rate will hover around 10 percent for the rest of the year.

And in the meantime, two million Americans will lose their unemployment benefits Monday:

The interruption in benefits will last two weeks at a minimum, according to Judy Conti of the National Employment Law Project (NELP), since lawmakers return from spring break on April 12.

As the two-week recess began, Congress was at an impasse over how to extend the emergency unemployment insurance program and other expiring provisions, including increased COBRA health insurance subsidies for the unemployed, the Medicare doctor payment rate and federal flood insurance.

Senate Republicans said the $9.3 billion, 30-day extension preferred by Democrats should be paid for, while Democrats said the bill's cost didn't need to be offset because the program was "emergency spending."

Under the jobless benefits program that ends Monday, Americans out of work are eligible for up to 99 weeks of unemployment benefits. The program, aimed at helping jobless Americans stay afloat when new jobs aren't readily available, gives an unemployed worker more than the 26 weeks of unemployment insurance normally available. But with the program ending, those out of work for as few as six months will see an interruption in their benefit checks.

This will be fixed when Congress returns and the benefits will be paid retroacticely, but in the meantime, a lot of people will be suffering real hardship. Nice work, House of Lords!

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I'm not sure by whom I am more annoyed in this clip: Cryin' John Boehner, Steny "Bipartisanship Trumps All" Hoyer or Fox "Pravda" News. If it's Fox News and it's a Republican politico, I EXPECT lying and partisanship. In that sense, Boehner doesn't disappoint. But then again, I've come to expect rather milquetoast-y appearance from Dems too, and Hoyer fulfills that expectation nicely as well. So therefore, I fall to my default position that FoxNews framing is ridiculously insulting to the intelligence of any sentient being who happens to be watching.

Like the proverbial toddler deprived of a cookie, host Chris Wallace stamps his feet and whines why isn't everything better RIGHT NOW?!?! Just six months into a presidency that inherited the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression and damn it, that watered down stimulus bill--that HAD to include tax cuts demanded by the GOP that does little to nothing to stimulate--isn't giving us immediate gratification and relief? Amazing!

Never mind that Obama had to deal with governors refusing stimulus money to score cheap points with the base and that some states are using the stimulus money to shore up budget shortfalls. Never mind that economists said it would take 12-18 months to see results, the WATBs of Fox/GOP want our results NOW!!!!

Cryin' John's appearance was so full of lies and half-truths, it's hard to know where to begin:

This was supposed to be about jobs, jobs, and jobs. And the fact is it turned into nothing more than spending, spending, and more spending on a lot of big government bureaucracy.

I know you're not this obtuse, but just playing the partisan game for those of your base not capable of thinking for themselves--but let's try this again: Government projects means hiring people to do those projects.

In Ohio, the infrastructure dollars that were sent there months ago -- there hasn’t been a contract let, to my knowledge. And the fact is -- is I don’t believe it will create jobs.

Is that so? No contracts? And you don't think it will create jobs? Really? Your nose is growing, Boehner.

And, Steny, the real question is where are the jobs. You can’t spend $800 billion of taxpayer money and not create jobs when you say that’s what the goal was. We haven’t seen the jobs yet.

Of course, if you had a shred of intellectual honesty, you'd admit that the White House said we wouldn't really see job creation until 2010. It's much better to play dumb and pout about not seeing immediate results magically.

BOEHNER: If you really want to get the economy going, you have to trust small businesses and the American people to reinvest their own money. So we (inaudible) into this bill and allow them to keep more of what they earn.

HOYER: John’s plan was what they proposed in 2001. Chris, I don’t want to look back.

BOEHNER: It created 5 million new jobs.

Uh huh. Paul Krugman called it correctly:

You can offer various excuses and explanations, but how anyone can suggest that Republicans are more committed to and/or credible about job creation is a mystery

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