Multiply it for all the families affected with them.

Then figure out what that could mean in the next elections.

Some of those unemployed for a year or more now are in my family, and I am not forgiving the party in power for not using its powers to do more.

And where I live, in one of the hardest-hit cities, and in the work that I fortunately have -- albeit with a pay cut (furlough), hardly a day goes by that I do not talk with someone else also in a family suffering from this as well.

Just yesterday, I talked with a student going deeper and deeper in debt, along with her family, as her father has been out of work for 16 months now.  He is a highly skilled electrician who had worked all his life, but the decline of construction work has been a death knell here -- for our family, too.  But the money worries for the student are not her main worry, as her father is so depressed and her mother so stressed from taking on another parttime job (so no benefits).

The day before, it was a guy in his 30s, out of his work in manufacturing for almost a year now, a job he had for decades where most of his family worked, so most are out of work.  So they cannot help him, a single father, keep his kid's home.

Every day, another story, another life affecting many lives -- and many voters.  We will not forget . . . and we are reminded of an uncaring White House and Congress every time that the extension bills are not done on time because they are just too busy.  And that screws up so much every time for weeks afterward, too -- more weeks of worry and stress for our families and millions of others who may just be too busy to vote for the fools when their jobs are on the line next.

The financial services sector is 40% of our economy.  Have we not stimulated that?  People work on Wall Street don't they?  Have we not saved those jobs?  And their salaries?  And their bonuses?