President Barack Obama will visit a small business and talk about job-creation Friday shortly after the government releases unemployment figures for July.

The president will tour the facilities of Gelberg Signs in the District of Columbia and publicly applaud efforts the company is making to expand and hire more workers.

Later, he'll host a reception at the White House for Elena Kagan, newly confirmed to become the next Supreme Court justice.

Friday's report on the nation's employment situation is expected to show that private companies added only 90,000 jobs in July, not nearly enough for healthy economic growth.

Sen. Arlen Specter says he will support the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court despite what he calls her "non-answers" to senators' questions during confirmation hearings.

In an op-ed piece published Thursday in USA Today, the Pennsylvania Democrat and past critic of Kagan said she "did just enough to win my vote."

Specter, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, cited Kagan's openness to televised Supreme Court proceedings and her pick of Justice Thurgood Marshall as her role model.

Specter voted last year against confirming Kagan to her current post as solicitor general. He was then a Republican, and has said he opposed her because she wouldn't answer questions about how she'd approach cases.

Specter, who switched parties last year, acknowledged in his op-ed that Kagan was following other high court nominees in giving evasive responses. "But her non-answers were all the more frustrating, given her past writings that the hearings were vacuous and lacked substance," he wrote, referring to a 1995 book review by Kagan that criticized Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

Republican Sen. John McCain says he plans to vote against confirming Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan.

The Arizona senator's decision makes him the latest in the GOP to oppose President Barack Obama's nominee to succeed retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.

McCain says Kagan is unlikely to exercise judicial restraint, based on her decision as dean of Harvard Law School to bar military recruiters from the campus career services office because of the ban on openly gay soldiers.

Democrats have more than enough votes to confirm Kagan. So far, no Republican has announced plans to back her.

The White House is expected to tap Kenneth Feinberg as the independent administrator of an oil-spill escrow fund being negotiated by BP PLC and the administration, according to U.S. officials.

In his Oval Office address Tuesday night, President Barack Obama said BP should establish a restitution fund with "whatever resources are required," controlled by an independent administrator.

Lawmakers have suggested BP contribute $20 billion to the fund, which would would compensate Gulf residents for losses associated with the oil spill.

Mr. Feinberg will run the claims process as independent third party.

The attorney has taken on a series of high-profile arbitration cases during his career. He is currently the U.S. government's pay czar, a role in which he butted heads with financial executives over their pay packages. He also oversaw the federal government's compensation fund for victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Struggling to show leadership in a crisis, President Barack Obama is embarking on a three-state tour of Gulf Coast states tainted by oil before speaking to the nation about the country's worst environmental disaster and what to expect in the weeks ahead.

Before the start Monday of a two-day trip to Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, the White House announced Obama would order BP to establish a major victims' compensation fund. When he returns to Washington on Tuesday evening Obama will use his first Oval Office speech as president to address the catastrophe.

BP said in a statement that its costs for responding to the spill had risen to $1.6 billion, including new $25 million grants to Florida, Alabama and Mississippi. It also includes the first $60 million for a project to build barrier islands off the Louisiana coast. The estimate does not include future costs for scores of damage lawsuits already filed.

Obama's first three trips to the Gulf took him to the hardest-hit state, Louisiana. On Monday, Day 56 since BP's leased Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded and unleashed a fury of oil into the Gulf, he's flying to Gulfport, Miss. From there he'll travel along the coast to Alabama, where oil was washing up in heavy amounts along the shores Sunday in the eastern part of the state.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, which is to begin Kagan's confirmation hearings June 28, has requested all documents from her tenure in the Clinton White House. The panel also requested papers related to Kagan's failed nomination to a federal appeals court, which are expected to be included in Friday's release.

A first, 46,500-page batch of files from Kagan's stint as a domestic policy adviser to Clinton, released last week, yielded some clues about her pragmatic style and views. She helped Clinton craft a middle-ground position on late-term abortions that angered groups on both sides of the highly charged issue, praised a legal brief designed to protect affirmative action and helped craft an aggressive strategy to enact gun control measures. She also was instrumental in intense but ultimately unsuccessful bipartisan negotiations on a major anti-smoking initiative.