WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama will announce a new plan next week to help Americans who continue to struggle to find jobs even as the economy recovers from recession, his senior adviser, Dan Pfeiffer, said on Saturday.
Obama's efforts to help the long-term unemployed are part of an economic strategy he will lay out in his annual State of the Union address on Tuesday and expound upon during a four-state tour, Pfeiffer said in a mass e-mail from the White House.
"With some action on all our parts, we can help more job seekers find work, and more working Americans find the economic security they deserve," Pfeiffer said in his e-mail.
"That's why, in the week following the speech, President Obama will travel to communities across the country including Prince George's County, Maryland, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, and Nashville, before returning to the White House to outline new efforts to help the long-term unemployed," he said.
Obama has vowed to address the gap between rich and poor in America and has said he will do what he can even without help from a deeply divided Congress.
Already this year, Congress thwarted Obama's efforts to extend jobless benefits for people who have been unsuccessfully seeking work for more than six months.
Benefits for 1.5 million Americans expired at the end of 2013. The Senate failed in mid-January to agree on a plan to renew the benefits.
Obama had promised earlier this month that he would bring a group of chief executive officers to the White House to persuade them to hire more people from the ranks of the long-term unemployed.
"We're going to try to work with CEOs to make a pledge that we're going to take a second look at these Americans who are very eager to get back to work and have the capacity to do so, but aren't getting the kind of shot that they need," Obama said on Jan. 14 ahead of a meeting with his cabinet.
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