That said, the industry wouldn’t turn down some help from Congress, says John Sturm, CEO of the Newspaper Association of America.

Testifying at a House hearing this morning, Sturm says his group does like proposals that would let newspapers–and other businesses–change some of their accounting practices related to tax refunds (via net operating-loss provisions) and pension plans. Oh, and he’s in favor of a proposed law that would let papers operate as nonprofits while still generating advertising revenue.

The complete text of Sturm’s opening statement is embedded at the bottom of this post, and if you want to watch the hearing, organized by Congress’s Joint Economic Committee, it was streamed live (albeit choppily) here.

My political handicapping skills are nonexistent, but that said, I think there’s no chance of Congress passing a bill that singles out newspapers for aid. Local papers are still vitally important to local lawmakers, but many of those lawmakers’ constituents hate their papers, for all manner of offenses, real and imagined. I just can’t imagine what they’d do if they were told their tax dollars were going to support their local rag.

Still, I wouldn’t rule out some politically motivated pressure being applied to bogeymen like Craigslist and Google (GOOG), in the form of antitrust scrutiny or other arm-twisting.

JFS-Statement-Joint-Economic-Committee-092409-Hearing –

Great news, right? Until you realize that the “planned reductions” to which the company refers were up 47 percent from a year earlier and are still at recession levels. So while this is the third consecutive month in which layoffs declined, the job market is still in lousy shape.

Employers have sacked 711,100 employees so far this year. That’s 145 percent percent more than the 290,671 they cut in the first quarter of 2008. Keep in mind, this is “planned layoffs” we’re talking about. Presumably there were some unplanned ones as well.

“Job cuts are still at recession levels, but the fact that they are falling is certainly promising and may suggest that employers are starting to feel a little more confident about future business conditions,” said Challenger CEO John Challenger. “Hopefully, the next few months will bring further relief, as we tend to see downsizing activity slow during the summer months.”

Yeah, “hopefully.” But don’t count on it. Because Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says the economy hasn’t quite bottomed out yet. Which means things may get a bit worse before they get better.

“The most recent information on the labor market–the number of new and continuing claims for unemployment insurance through late April–suggests that we are likely to see further sizable job losses and increased unemployment in coming months,” Bernanke recently told the congressional Joint Economic Committee.

Congress’ Joint Economic Committee is expected to issue a report on the potential taxation of virtual goods by the end of July. No word yet on what it might say, although a JEC director has suggested that “as long as virtual activity stays within the virtual economy, it shouldn’t be taxable.” So is that to say that there are tax consequences for activity that extends beyond it? Sounds like it. “Any time someone wins a tangible prize or award, the value is reportable as taxable income,” an Internal Revenue Service rep told CNN earlier this year. “An accumulation of ‘points’ would not result in tax consequences, but redeeming or selling them for money, goods, or services would.”