CBO projects 8%-plus unemployment into 2014

This can't be good news for President Obama.

The Congressional Budget Office is projecting unemployment of more than 8% throughout this election year and into 2014.

"The rate of unemployment in the United States has exceeded 8 percent since February 2009, making the past three years the longest stretch of high unemployment in this country since the Great Depression," the CBO says in a newly released report.

It added: "CBO projects that the unemployment rate will remain above 8 percent until 2014. The share of unemployed people who have been looking for work for more than six months -- referred to as the long-term unemployed -- topped 40 percent in December 2009 and has remained above that level ever since."

Republicans are citing the new CBO report as an indictment of Obama's economic policies, particularly the stimulus bill the president signed three years ago Friday.

"Today, there's no denying the fact that his stimulus policies not only failed, they made things worse," said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Obama aides said they inherited an economic crisis, and that the stimulus and other actions staved off a second Great Depression.

"Although unemployment is still too high, over the last 23 months we've created 3.7 million jobs," Obama said today at a 2012 campaign fundraiser in California. "And people are starting to get a sense that the economy is on the rebound."