you see the news pulse peg in the top left corner. we like to monitor stories that are basically being updated about 15 minutes, stories you click on to, the most popular. we told you about this one, the number one story on cnn.com news pulse, tax audits. uncle sam wanting you. check in with our gerri willis. she actually tells you how to try and avoid an audit this year as the irs is looking at more folks to audit. here s a story that we didn t have in our newscast but it is the second most popular right now. the fashion designer, alexander mcqueen. he hanged himself in his wardrobe and left a suicide note. that s according to a coroner that was interviewed. it is the second-most popular story right now on cnn.com. we ve also told you about the brand names of many items on store shelves being dumped. a lot of that to do with saving money. do down here, the israeli polygamist charged.
toughest inspector generals in washington as well as professionals from private industry to help run the implementation. and every american can see how and where this money has been spent just by going on www.recovery.gov. now, just to review, one-third of the money in this bill, one-third was made up of tax cuts. i talked about this in the state of the union. tax cuts for 95% of working americans. i just want to say to the american people, because we see some polling where about twice as many people think we ve raised taxes as lowered taxes. 95% of you got a tax cut. tax cuts [ applause ] tax cuts for 95% of working americans, tax cuts for small businesses, tax cuts for first-time home buyers, tax cuts for parents trying to care for their kids, tax cuts for eight million americans paying for
here on your screen is how much money has actually been spent from the total. $119 billion have already gone to tax cuts and $179 billion have already been paid out. and that includes $31 billion on projects. the things we talk about the most, road projects, science projects, these kinds of things, we re seeing $31 billion in total that s actually been spent on those kinds of projects, and that what we re breaking down for you here at the stimulus desk. what about jobs? jobs is the biggest thing a lot of people want to know about. what we hear from the administration a lot of the time is they believe there are 2 million people working today who would not be working otherwise. i ll break it down intensely over the next hour, in the 10:00 hour. but i ll tell you right now, there is no such thing as one very clear number of jobs because that depends how you define it. you have to be there with us when we break this down for you in the next hour. i bet the viewers have a lot
we re looking back because it was signed into law one year ago today. happy birthday, stimulus. we tried to check back on what this administration said about it in general. here is one thing that president obama said at the time. i hope this investment will ignite our imagination once more, spurring new discoveries and break-throughs in science and in medicine, in energy to make our economy stronger and our nation more secure and our planet safer for our children. there s no doubt the stimulus money has gone to all sorts of different projects. but what so many people keep asking us is where is this money going, how much is it. let s get straight to the numbers. first, according to the congressional budget office, the total cost of the stimulus over ten years, $862 billion. but what a lot of people may not realize is the majority of it actually does not go to funding projects out there. the majority is going to things like tax cuts, benefits like social security and food stamps.
not one of the 50 governors we have spoken to, democratic or republican, has failed to show appreciation for the relief. and i also have to tell you that i am concerned because state budgets have not yet recovered and you are now seeing a whole bunch of state and local governments who were able to put off layoffs last year. as the recovery money is rung out, having to make very tough decisions, and we could potentially see layoffs taking place this year because we had to re-up, in terms of providing some help for those state and local governments. that is something that we are watching and we are concerned about. now, the last third of the recovery act is what i want to talk a little bit about, more today. the reasons blake and doug are here. that third is about rebuilding our economy on a new and stronger foundation for growth. over the long term, see, we knew when we came into office it was not enough simply to solve the