Barack Obama pushes Congress to act on lapsed unemployment benefits

President Barack Obama said he would sign a bill extending unemployment benefits should Congress pass one. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

President Barack Obama on Saturday used his weekly presidential address to urge Congress to reinstate jobless benefits for more than a million Americans. The benefits lapsed on 28 December, after they were not included in bipartisan budget deal.

In his address, released while he concludes a vacation in Hawaii, the president said the unemployment insurance was a 'vital economic lifeline' for many people. He stressed that failure to reinstate the benefits would cause the economy to slow for all Americans.

The president's remarks came a day after a Harvard economist, Professor Lawrence Katz, said the 'fiscally irresponsible' decision to let the benefits lapse was costing the US economy up to a billion dollars a week.

A bipartisan proposal in the Senate would restore the benefits for three months. Obama says if lawmakers pass the measure, he will sign it.

Obama said: 'Just a few days after Christmas, more than one million of our fellow Americans lost a vital economic lifeline - the temporary insurance that helps folks make ends meet while they look for a job. Republicans in Congress went home for the holidays and let that lifeline expire. And for many of their constituents who are unemployed through no fault of their own, that decision will leave them with no income at all. '

He added that the lapse in unemployment benefits 'actually slows down the economy for all of us', and said: 'If folks can't pay their bills or buy the basics, like food and clothes, local businesses take a hit and hire fewer workers. That's why the independent Congressional Budget Office says that unless Congress restores this insurance, we'll feel a drag on our economic growth this year. And after our businesses created more than two million new jobs last year, that's a self-inflicted wound we don't need.'

Obama, who is due to return from vacation in Hawaii on Sunday, concluded his address with an appeal for bipartisan co-operation.

'When Congress comes back to work this week,' he said, 'their first order of business should be making this right. Right now, a bipartisan group in Congress is working on a three-month extension of unemployment insurance - and if they pass it, I will sign it. For decades, Republicans and Democrats put partisanship and ideology aside to offer some security for job-seekers, even when the unemployment rate was lower than it is today. Instead of punishing families who can least afford it, Republicans should make it their New Year's resolution to do the right thing, and restore this vital economic security for their constituents right now.'

Mississippi Congressman Gregg Harper used the Republican weekly address to call on the Senate to pass the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act. The bill, which seeks to boost funding for pediatric research at the National Institutes of Health, passed the House in December.