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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) – Lawmakers in both the House and Senate introduced bills this week to push the deadline to apply for unemployment benefits to as far back as 2011.

Congress last month passed a record-long extension of federally paid benefits, but the law only helps those who exhaust their lifelines by year's end. So while unemployment benefits now run as long as 99 weeks, depending on the state, not everyone will receive checks for that long a stretch.

If the deadline is not extended beyond Dec. 31, one million jobless Americans will lose their benefits in January. Some three million people will stop receiving checks by March, according to the National Employment Law Project.

Some 9 million people currently depend on jobless benefits. The government reported Friday that 10% of Americans are out of work and more than a third have been unemployed for at least six months.

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The CNN Express in Chattanooga, TN

The CNN Express is on the road and we are on a mission: Let Americans tell their own economic story. The first stop? Chattanooga, Tennessee.

After interviewing local residents throughout the day, we’re beginning to separate the heated town hall debates and politics of Washington from what the people of the 4th largest city in Tennessee actually want from their health care. The citizens we’ve spoken with are primarily concerned with three key issues: affordability, quality of care and choice of physician.

One father said, “I’m worried about the big illness that can bankrupt a family.”

A mother of three told us, “I want to afford the best care that I can for myself and my children. I don’t want to settle for less than the best if our life is at stake.”

While countless others voiced the need to “pick their own doctor.”

The bottom line is the people of this town were genuinely concerned and were looking for information. Will the government’s plan actually limit their choice of health care? Will it cost more money? How will it affect their family’s ability to use the emergency room in dire situations?

Along our entire journey from Atlanta, Georgia, to Des Monies, Iowa, we are going to answer as many questions as we can and constantly ask one simple question: What do you want from your health care coverage?

This is the conversation happening all week on the CNN Express and we’re just getting started! Follow our trip on Twitter @CNNExpress and @AliVelshi.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - A lot was supposed to happen on health reform before Congress went on summer vacation. Turns out, a lot didn't. End result: The heavy lifting on health reform legislation has been pushed to the fall.

A bipartisan group of six senators from the Senate Finance Committee was supposed to unveil its health reform bill - or at least an outline. But the group couldn't resolve some outstanding issues such as how to make sure the health insurance structures they're proposing end up being affordable.

It's also unclear whether the group will release a draft before the start of the Senate summer recess next Friday. That means the full committee, to say nothing of the full Senate, won't begin to debate the proposal until the leaves start turning a lovely autumn orange.

Meanwhile, House leaders had been promising a full floor vote on health reform before the congressional recess, which begins on Saturday. But that idea was tabled once it became clear that the last of the three committees - the Energy and Commerce Committee - wouldn't report the bill out of committee until the 11th hour.

That means the full House won't take up a health reform bill before fall.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) – Loan servicers will "significantly" increase the pace of mortgage modifications under the Obama foreclosure prevention program, the Treasury Department said Tuesday.

The Obama administration wants to see 500,000 trial modifications in place by Nov. 1. Currently, 200,000 are underway.

Officials called executives from 25 servicers participating in the program to Washington Tuesday to discuss improving the 5-month-old plan's implementation.

Both the Obama administration and the industry are feeling mounting pressure from borrowers who say their servicers are not responding to their calls and applications, losing their paperwork or not making decisions.

"[T]oo many homeowners are at risk of foreclosure right now," Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said in a statement Tuesday. "Today's meeting was an opportunity to identify ways to accelerate the program and bring relief faster."

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - It may not be long before shareholders have more control over how much money top executives across the country make.

This week, both the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee are tackling the issue of "say on pay" - which would allow investors to vote on compensation packages.. Experts think Congress could soon pass such legislation and have it on President Obama's desk as early as this fall.

"Unless there is something that takes executive compensation out of the headlines, I think it is likely these provisions will become law," said Michael Melbinger, a lawyer at Winston & Strawn, who serves as chair of the firm's executive compensation practice.

From exorbitant salaries to outsized bonuses, corporate compensation practices have remained a lightning rod of criticism from lawmakers and taxpayers for much of this year.

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WASHINGTON (CNNMoney.com) - One of the signature proposals in the Obama administration's efforts to reshape the regulatory framework for banks has been slowed as supporters regroup in the midst of mounting opposition.

The creation of a new consumer protection agency to regulate mortgages, credit cards and credit insurance was never going to be easy. But the forces trying to stop or water down the proposal have grown beyond banks and financial sector lobbyists.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, testifying Wednesday before the Senate Banking Committee, argued strongly that the central bank should keep its consumer protection powers, which would otherwise move to the new agency.

Bernanke also suggested that Congress take steps to elevate consumer protection to a more prominent role at the Fed.

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WASHINGTON (CNNMoney.com) - The top cop tracking the $700 billion bailout program said Monday that he's concerned federal officials are ignoring his proposals for preventing tax dollars from being wasted or pilfered.

Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general overseeing the Troubled Asset Relief Program, released a 260-page report detailing a long list of concerns about government efforts to prop up hundreds of banks, Wall Street firms and auto companies.

The report criticizes the Treasury Department the most for its unwillingness to adopt some of his recommendations.

Barofsky cites two examples: He wants Treasury to force bailout recipients to keep track of how exactly they are spending TARP funds. He also wants officials to erect a "firewall" to prevent private investment managers - the kind hired to manage and invest taxpayer dollars - from taking advantage of insider knowledge.

"Although Treasury has taken some steps towards improving transparency in TARP programs, it has repeatedly failed to adopt recommendations that SIGTARP believes are essential to providing basic transparency and fulfill Treasury's stated commitment to implement TARP 'with the highest degree of accountability and transparency possible,' " the report stated.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) – As complaints mount about President Obama's foreclosure prevention program, the administration is ratcheting up the pressure on mortgage servicers.

Financial executives will meet with Treasury and Housing officials on July 28 to discuss how the loan modification and refinancing plan has been implemented. The administration plans to grill servicers that have done few modifications or have had many complaints.

Officials also want financial institutions to hire more people and train them better, expand their call centers, and send more mailings to eligible borrowers, according to a letter sent to servicers last week. The government also said servicers need to establish a way for borrowers to contest their treatment or denial.

"There is a general need for servicers to devote substantially more resources to this program for it to fully succeed and achieve the objectives we all share," according to the letter, signed by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Housing Secretary Shaun Donovan. "We are asking all servicers expand their servicing capacity and improve the execution quality of loan modifications."

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - The health reform bills released so far would increase government spending on health care without sufficiently reining in health care costs.

And at least initially they aren't likely to significantly lower premiums for the majority of Americans with employer-sponsored health insurance.

That's the sobering takeaway from testimony Thursday by Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf.

Elmendorf's preliminary conclusions were based on a bill jointly released by three committees in the House this week and another bill passed by the Senate health committee on Wednesday.

"The creation of a new subsidy for health insurance ... would by itself raise federal spending on health care. ... [T]o offset that there have to be substantial reductions (on the tax or spending sides of the ledger]," Elmendorf told the Senate Budget Committee. "The changes we've looked at so far don't represent the fundamental change on the order of magnitude that would be necessary."

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) – Lawmakers searching for a way to pay for health care reform are facing some rough waters.

Very rough.

Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has said repeatedly that health reform would be paid for with a combination of spending cuts and tax increases.

Baucus and others have made some progress through savings in Medicare, Medicaid and other programs.

On Wednesday, for instance, Vice President Biden said hospitals would reduce costs by $155 billion over 10 years. But nothing is final until that deal between the White House and business - and a similar one reached with drugmakers last month - is written into legislation.

And on the revenue side of the equation, there is still no apparent consensus.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Fiscally-stressed states are using their stimulus dollars to satisfy immediate needs rather than undertake longer-term reforms, according to a government report released Wednesday.

For example, states are spending education funds to prevent layoffs and maintain programs, a Government Accountability Office report found.

Trying to survive one of the worst economic downturns since the Great Depression, state and school district officials say they don't have the money to undertake projects such as building new schools and expanding early-childhood education.

Similarly, states are using nearly half their infrastructure funds for pavement improvements, which can be implemented quickly and don't require environmental clearances and in-depth design work.

The $787 billion recovery act walks a fine line between trying to get funds out quickly to stimulate the economy and spurring longer-term initiatives.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - It is one of the touchiest issues in the health care debate: Would a government-run health plan upend the employer-based health insurance system used by 160 million Americans?

Senate Democrats behind a key proposal released Thursday say the answer is no.

Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Chris Dodd, D-Conn., say their plan would preserve employer-sponsored insurance coverage and create an affordable public option for those who need it.

"The ... bill virtually eliminates the dropping of currently covered employees from employer-sponsored health plans," Kennedy and Dodd said in a letter to members of the Health Committee, one of two Senate groups working on health reform.

The bill includes a "pay or play" provision that would require employers to provide adequate coverage for their workers or subsidize a system that will.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) – President Obama is pouring $13 billion into an ambitious high-speed rail project. Some say it will never make money. Some say it will. And still others say profit is not even the point.

Obama's plan is "to jump-start a potential world-class passenger rail" in 10 major corridors, linking cities within the Northeast, California, Florida and other regions with "bullet trains" that exceed 110 miles per hour. State governments are in the process of applying for the federal funds.

Sam Staley, director of urban growth and land-use policy at the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think-tank, said the project is risky, and that forecasts used to promote high-speed rail are "notoriously unreliable" because they "overestimate ridership and underestimate cost."

California, the nation's most heavily populated state, is undergoing the most ambitious project: high-speed rail system that would link San Diego to San Francisco and Sacramento.

Mehdi Morshed, executive director of the California High Speed Rail Authority, estimated that the San Francisco-to-Anaheim leg will cost $34 billion, nearly half of which would come from the federal government.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - The Obama administration is widening its mortgage refinancing program to allow more borrowers hit hard by falling home prices to take part.

Borrowers whose loans are now worth up to 125% of their home's value are now eligible to refinance their homes under the Obama foreclosure prevention plan announced in February. Previously, the limit was 105%.

The move acknowledges that home prices in many areas have fallen so far that many people were shut out of the program. Some 67% of homeowners in Las Vegas - one of the hardest hit areas where Housing Secretary Shaun Donovan announced the expansion Wednesday - owe more than their homes are worth.

"The president's Making Home Affordable plan is already helping far more than any previous foreclosure initiative and with today's announcement we will extend its reach still further," said Donovan.

Some 20,000 loans have been refinanced so far, according to the Treasury Department.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) – The promise of health reform is to make care more accessible for everybody - and to reduce the federal deficit by slowing the growth rate in costs.

But the promise of deficit reduction through health reform might be overstated.

Here's why: Even if reform works well, the cost savings will not be nearly enough to tackle the debt ogre breathing down Uncle Sam's neck.

"Ultimately, the long-term budget outlook will necessitate serious tax and spending changes," says the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which is led by tax and budget experts from the left and the right.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) – There's a lot of talking going on about health care reform and urgent warnings of what will happen if it doesn't pass. But for all the talk, there's very little clarity for the public about what kind of reform has a serious chance of passing and how lawmakers intend to pay for it.

The reason: Legitimate disagreement about how the country should overhaul the health care system. And it's not just between Democrats and Republicans. It's within the parties as well.

Vigorous debate is inevitable and necessary. After all, health care reform would be the biggest and most complex undertaking that lawmakers have dealt with in decades, and it would have consequences for every American.

But President Obama has set a tight deadline. He wants both the House and Senate to pass their health reform bills by Aug. 1.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Americans are being told daily that health reform isn't just the right thing to do - it will also help save the economy.

"Health care reform is not part of the problem when it comes to our fiscal future, it is a fundamental part of the solution," President Obama said in a recent address.

The crux of the problem: The United States spends far more on health care than do other developed countries, but it often gets far less bang for its buck. Meanwhile, a large number of Americans either can't afford insurance or have insurance that doesn't adequately cover their medical costs.

The kicker, of course, is that rising costs are making the country's long-term fiscal picture very, very ugly.

For many, the Washington debate over the mind-bending details of different options obscures the issue of what's at stake. What is the threat to the economy if no action is taken? What happens if a health system overhaul succeeds ... and what are the economic perils if it fails?

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) – President Obama on Wednesday will finally announce his long-anticipated plan to restructure how banks and other firms are regulated in the hope of preventing another financial collapse.

The far-reaching effort would reorder the roles of some key agencies to try to tighten government supervision of the financial sector.

Obama's plan will include a proposal to get rid of the embattled Office of Thrift Supervision and merge it with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a senior administration official said Tuesday evening.

The OTS has been on the hot seat for months for its role as the overseer of American International Group (AIG, Fortune 500) and failed lenders IndyMac and Washington Mutual. The comptroller's office is a Treasury Department bureau that regulates national banks.

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states are poised to pass as much as $24 billion in tax and fee hikes in coming weeks.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) – States are poised to pass as much as $24 billion in tax and fee hikes in coming weeks, as they struggle to balance their budgets amid the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, a report released Thursday found.

The spike blows away the $726 million in recommended increases for fiscal 2009.

At the same time, state budgets are set to shrink for a record second year in a row. The recession has caused tax collections to plummetandthe need for social services to soar. State officials are scrambling to close last-minute budget gaps that opened after April tax revenues came in below already-lowered estimates. States may be forced to tap rainy day funds or impose even more stringent spending cuts to balance their budgets before their fiscal years end on June 30.

Governors' proposed budgets for fiscal year 2010 show a 2.5% decrease in general fund spending, which comes after an estimated 2.2% decline in the current fiscal year,

This is the largest pullback in the survey's 30-year history and the first time state spending would decline for two years in a row, according to
the National Governors Association and the National Association of State Budget Officers. General fund spending, which is not earmarked for specific uses, covers mainly education, Medicaid, corrections, public assistance and transportation.

Some 29 states are recommending tax and fee increases for the coming fiscal year.

California, which is struggling to close a $21.3 billion budget gap, accounts for $11.3 billion of the hike. Illinois makes up another $4.4 billion, while New York is proposing $4 billion in additional levies.
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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - The wear-and-tear of a 22-month campaign may seem like a Caribbean vacation next to what awaits President-elect Barack Obama when he takes over as the 44th president of the United States.

In his first year in office, he will have to tackle the mountain of complex and unprecedented problems facing the country. His agenda will be driven by the need to stabilize the financial system and the pained economy.

Since mid-September, which was the last time CNNMoney.com took a crack at gauging what No. 44's economic to-do list would be, the financial world - and Washington - have been turned on their heads.

Click here to read more at CNNMoney.com