million. now the reason it s important is everyone is talking about that the stimulus didn t work. if we ve had up to 3.3 million, this is the cbo saying this, how can you say that the stimulus didn t work. well, everyone, al, knows the stimulus did work. it preserved jobs, and it created jobs. the infrastructure we should have frankly had more infrastructure in it, but that worked like a charm, absolutely like a charm. it helped america dramatically. the cbo said earlier unemployment could have been as high as 1% or 2% more without the stimulus, but we let, and i blame all of us, the democrats, we let the republicans spin the stimulus in that first week and give it such a bad name that nobody listens to the facts, but the facts are the stimulus worked and it can work again if the congress passed the second jobs bill. the progressive caucus has been fighting for more
today, we buy 9.2 ships a year and we have 25,000 people in the bureau of ships. before the stimulus package we had one person in the department of transportation making $170,000 or more. right after the stimulus package was passed we have 1,149 people in the department of transportation getting paid more than $170,000. this is why the stimulus didn t work. it didn t, the whole idea of a stimulus, it is pump priming. stimulate. get it going. it didn t do anything like that because none of it worked its way into the public sector. the gang downtown, you want to see trickle down economics work.
raise employment levels as much as actually had been predicted. it s just that the administration thought the starting point would be higher in terms of employment than it was, so there was still pretty profound unemployment afterwards, but the stimulus created about as many jobs as people thought. nonetheless, the republicans are out there for two years saying stimulus didn t work, it didn t work, it didn t work. and it did. democrats were not able to win that fight and now the republican play is to make this sound like the second stimulus. let me just say this, david. when muhammad ali was up on the ropes, he was they were saying he was taking alost hits. yeah. but the truth of the matter is that this will be the only president in our lifetime, he ll be able to go to every corner of this country and point to actual projects, actual people who went to work, things got done. in philadelphia alone, our transit system has done 200 we ve got to go out there and i don t
president obama is appealing to unions as he tries to drum up support for the new jobs plan. the president touring a union training facility in pittsburgh before making the half trillion spending pitch. it wasn t enough to win over one union member. and now, a union electrician in pittsburgh. you are a card carrying union member; that right? guest: that is correct. thank you for having me. so, you do not agree with the president? you do not like the additional $447 billion in spending? guest: absolutely not. we have seen this before. this is stimulus replayed. tarp didn t work. stimulus didn t work. quantitative easing didn t work. the only thing that is working is to stop the regulations and town the free market loose more, and, if you really want do make a difference and you are talking about the taxes go for the real heart of the problem: revamp the
regulations. if you really want the economy to grow. gretta, there are 14 million americans who want to hurt. about 4 million of them have been out of work for over a year. there s a better chance they will never work again those people who have been out of work for over a year than they will get a job. people are hurting around the country and i think for the president to play politics with this is a mistake. this is a way to get people to work. we have all these regulars. this president and this administration is on a regulatory rampage. expensive. and, of course, you talk about people out of work or want to work. there are those unemployed people who would like to work full time or would like to return to jobs commensurate with their work experience. there are a lot of people who are underemployed too that aren t even factored into your number. it s even worse, bleaker than that. it is. you take a look, we know what doesn t work. more borrowing and spending and overregulating an