Economic growth will remain sluggish and "well below" the economy's potential for several years, according to a report issued Wednesday by the Congressional Budget Office. The non-partisan agency projected that unemployment would stay above 8 percent until 2014 as a result of the worst recession since the Great Depression. In reality, the situation is even worse. The more accurate measure of unemployment counts those who can't find work and those who have been forced to settle for part-time jobs plus those who have given up hunting for work. "You have 16 percent of our people unemployed or underemployed. That's 25 million Americans," Sen. Bernie Sanders said. His proposal: "Let's start investing in job creation."

"Everybody in the world knows that our infrastructure is crumbling. The fastest way to put people back to work is fixing roads, bridges, tunnels, public transportation, rail, water systems. The work is needed. Let's put people to work doing that," the senator said.

Sanders also called for a re-examination of failed international trade policies have seriously eroded America's manufacturing base by providing incentives to ship production and jobs to low-wage countries oversees. "Unfettered free trade agreements have been a disaster for working Americans. We've got to rethink it," Sanders said. "The demand has got to be that corporate America start investing - I know this is a radical idea - in the United States of America rather than in China."