(CBS) Already facing a sputtering economy and slow hiring, nearly 800,000 unemployed Americans face a new woe Saturday when their federal unemployment benefits end.

But Congress can start off the new year right by passing an extension that would cover all people who still cannot find work, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., said Saturday.

The former first lady's comments, coming in the weekly Democratic radio address, marked a return to the national stage. Since her election two years ago, she has focused on issues affecting her New York constituents and on developing relationships with Senate colleagues.

Clinton and her aides have said consistently that she does not plan to run for president in 2004. But a poll of Democrats released last weekend showed she would lead the field of likely party candidates should she seek the nomination.

Democrats, sensing political opportunity in the loss of unemployment benefits, have blamed Republicans and President Bush, and put Clinton center stage Saturday to deliver the punch.

In the address, Clinton said that another 13-week extension of federal unemployment benefits is smart economic policy, citing a Labor Department study that said each dollar generates $2.15 in the economy.

"We owe hard-working Americans, and our own economy, nothing less in the new year," she said. "It will come too late for this holiday season. But it's never too late to do the right thing."

Congress left for the year without extending the federal benefits, meaning that 750,000 to 800,000 unemployed workers were cut off Saturday. An additional 95,000 jobless workers will exhaust their state benefits each week afterward. Already, 1 million people have used all of their benefits.

There were two competing bills that languished: a $5 billion plan from the Democratic-controlled Senate that would have extended benefits 13 weeks for people now receiving them or who were newly eligible, and a $900 million plan from the GOP-led House for five extra weeks for workers in a few states with high unemployment rates.

Clinton said House Republicans are to blame for their refusal to consider the Senate plan. "They ran out the clock and went home for the holidays without even allowing a simple vote," she said.

"Regrettably, the House Republican leadership turned their backs on these families and refused to act, and the administration chose not to intervene before Congress adjourned," Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle said Friday. "This inaction by Republicans was unconscionable then and it is even more so now."

On the other hand, "It's unfortunate that the Senate didn't pick up our unemployment package and pass it," said John Feehery, spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.

As the last Congress neared its final days, with the rival Senate and House bills going nowhere, the White House stayed on the sidelines.

With lawmakers at an impasse, President Bush refused to lend his clout to break the logjam until two weeks ago, more than three weeks after Congress had already left town.

In his weekly radio address on Dec. 14 and again Saturday, Mr. Bush urged Congress to make a retroactive extension a priority in January. But he did not say which plan he supported, who should be covered and for how long.

The president has now sent a "very strong message" to Congress to extend the benefits and make them retroactive, said Labor Department spokeswoman Kathleen Harrington. The agency is confident that benefits will be extended, she said, and has been relaying that to many governors who are calling with questions.

Some states will continue to process claims for benefits and at least one state, Idaho, will keep paying them with the expectation that funding will be available early next year, she said.

"Now that the president has endorsed this extension, I urge him to support a meaningful plan that extends benefits for 13-weeks and covers people who have exhausted all of their benefits," Clinton said in the Saturday address. "Anything less would leave millions of Americans to begin the New Year with empty pockets and little hope."

In the last recession of the early 1990s, benefits were extended five times. But so far, Congress has authorized only one extension in the current recession. Republicans claim the Senate plan is too costly. But Clinton said the $24 billion in the unemployment insurance trust fund is "much more than enough."

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