Bob Herbert asks the right question today:

The big question on the domestic front right now is whether President Obama understands the gravity of the employment crisis facing the country. Does he get it? The signals coming out of the White House have not been encouraging.

The Beltway crowd and the Einsteins of high finance who never saw this economic collapse coming are now telling us with their usual breezy arrogance that the Great Recession is probably over. Their focus, of course, is on data, abstractions like the gross domestic product, not the continued suffering of living, breathing human beings struggling with the nightmare of joblessness.

Even Mr. Obama, in an interview with The Times, gave short shrift to the idea of an additional economic stimulus package, telling John Harwood a few weeks ago that the economy had likely turned a corner. “As you know,” the president said, “jobs tend to be a lagging indicator; they come last.”

The view of most American families is somewhat less blasé. Faced with the relentless monthly costs of housing, transportation, food, clothing, education and so forth, they have precious little time to wait for this lagging indicator to come creeping across the finish line.

   Herbert hits on the point made on this blog repeatedly: that the abstractions of government statistics clouds the great disaster underway in the country. The Times reports that the White House is thinking about what to do:

The search for further remedies is part of a two-track effort in the White House and Congress. Democrats are also considering plans to continue through 2010 the extra unemployment assistance and health benefits available to people who are out of work for long periods. Also likely to be retained, some officials say, is a popular $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers that was included in the $787 billion stimulus law and has helped rouse a housing market that nonetheless remains shaky.

The unemployment and health benefits are otherwise due to expire at the end of this year, and the homebuyer’s credit at the end of November. Extending the unemployment and health benefits alone through next year could cost up to $100 billion. Additional measures would raise the price at a time when the White House and Congress are confronting growing pressure to avoid adding to already high deficits.

   There seems to be some reluctance to pushing another big stimulus package because of the fear of budget deficits.

   To hell with those deficits. We are talking about peoples’ lives. You may remember that a couple of days ago I posted a blog about how some people have cut down on eating to save money. I reposted the blog from here on The Huffington Post and here was one of the comments:

I am trying to eat less, too. I will run out of unemployment soon. Truthfully, suicide looks better than living on the streets in winter.

   That comment still haunts me. And it should shake up the people who seem to be operating with an accountant’s mentality, not people who have a sense of the deep despair in the country.