January 15th, 2009 - - Stimulus Quick Facts
"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have." - Thomas Jefferson
Total Cost of Stimulus Legislation: $825 billion
- In 1993, the unemployment was virtually the same as the rate today (around 7%). Yet, Clinton’s proposed stimulus legislation *only* contained $16 billion in spending
- The total cost of this one piece of legislation is almost as much as the annual discretionary budget for the entire federal government.
- This legislation nears a trillion dollars. President Reagan said the best way to understand a trillion dollars is to imagine a crisp, new stack of $1000 bills. If you had a sack 4 inches high, you’d be a millionaire. A trillion-dollar stack of $1000 bills would measure just over 63 miles high.
- In $20 bills, a trillion dollar stack would be 3150 miles high. That’s about the distance between DC and Trujillo, Peru.
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President-elect Obama has said that his proposed stimulus legislation will create or save 3 million jobs. This means that this legislation will spend about $275,000 per job. The average household income in the U.S. is $50,000 a year.
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Many of the funding within the proposed stimulus package will go to programs which already have large, unexpended balances. For example, the draft bill provides $1 billion for Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), which already has $16 billion on hand. And, this year, Congress has plans to rescind $9 billion in highway funding that the states have not yet used.
Contact: Jennifer Hing, 202-226-7007
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