The Case For A Real Jobs Bill

The scope of the problem:

The Recovery Act did make a difference.

Between 600,000 and 1.6 million [7] The number of jobs the Congressional Budget Office found that the Recovery Act saved or created as of September 2009. The Act boosted economic activity by between 1.2 percent and 3.2 percent last summer, and unemployment would have been 0.3 to 0.9 percentage points higher without it.

10.8 percent [8] What the unemployment rate would have been without President Obama’s stimulus plan, according to a panel of 50 economists assembled by USA Today.

A real jobs program will make a real difference.

4.6 million [9] jobs would be created in the first year of the American Jobs Plan by the Economic Policy Institute, at a gross cost of roughly $400 billion. The entire cost would be recouped within 10 years by a financial transactions tax, which would take effect three years after enactment. The AFL-CIO jobs plan [10] would have a similar impact, and parts of it could be financed by funneling money in the Troubled Asset Relief Program fund that would otherwise go to large Wall Street financial institutions into community banks and credit unions that would use it to finance Main Street businesses.