Jobs and Economic Recovery
What You Need to Know

1. The GOP Pledge of cutting spending by more than 22% and permanently extending the Bush tax cuts will lead to a loss of over 1 million jobs.


2. Tax cuts deliver less than 40 cents of economic activity for every dollar of cuts, compared to $1.20 in economic output for every dollar of government spending on infrastructure or $1.90 for every dollar of unemployment benefits.


3. The typical unemployed worker is now out of work for over twenty weeks. The “long-term unemployed,” workers who have been unemployed for six months or more, made up 42 percent of the total in June 2010, the highest since the Great Depression.


4. Without the Stimulus Bill (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act), unemployment would be between 10.3% and 11.4% based on CBO estimates.


5. It took the massive government spending caused by World War II to finally get us out of the Great Depression. Federal spending during the war was 250% of GDP in 1940 (if you want an alternative measure, defense spending was 125% of GDP in 1940) ; the Stimulus Bill was less than 6% of GDP.


6. Despite having a public debt of close to 120% of GDP after WWII, the U.S. was still able to enter a 25-year boom period with average growth rates of 4% per year.


7. Every million additional jobs we create reduces the deficit by $54 billion.


8. Because of historically low interest rates, borrowing now for major investments to rebuild America will be cheaper than if we put it off—and will also help boost our recovery today.


9. America is suffering from a $1 trillion annual gap in demand, but the Recovery Act only plugged with $814 billion in funding , a total undermined by $425 billion cutbacks in state and local government spending.