At the White House, yesterday:

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Back in July, your budget office’s Mid-Session Review forecast that unemployment would be 7.7 percent in the second — in the fourth quarter of 2012. Will this package deal lower that projected rate? And also, is it going to do more to boost growth and create jobs than your Recovery Act?
THE PRESIDENT: This is not as significant a boost to the economy as the Recovery Act was, but we’re in a different situation now. I mean, when the Recovery Act passed, we were looking at a potential Great Depression and we might have seen unemployment go up to 15 percent, 20 percent — we don’t know. In combination with the work we did in stabilizing the financial system, the work that the Federal Reserve did, that’s behind us now. We don’t have the danger of a double-dip recession.

At the White House, today:

At an off-camera briefing this aftermoon, National Economic Council director Larry Summers said that a failure to pass the tax cut compromise President Obama negotiated “would significantly increase the risk” of a double-dip recession.