The CEA estimates the number of jobs saved through a GDP model, but the report also provides direct statistics on how the Recovery Act helped families and workers. The report notes that 22 million people, 14 percent of the labor force, have directly benefited from unemployment benefits provided in the  Recovery Act, for instance; 50 million retirees and others received $250 one-off assistance payments; and millions more benefited from a temporary boost to the earned income tax credit.

Holding the size of the labor force steady, without those 2.2. million jobs, the current unemployment rate would stand at 11.8 percent. Of course, higher unemployment would discourage workers from looking for jobs, etc., and it is impossible to project what the unemployment rate would have been if the government had not passed the Recovery Act. Regardless, the size of its benefit remains considerable.

In March, the House passed a $9 billion bill to prevent benefit loss. The Senate rushed to pass the House version before the congressional recess started on March 26, but faced opposition from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who demanded that Democrats find a way to pay for the extension. Senate majority and minority leaders Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) started negotiations on the issue, but failed to reach a compromise before recess.

While senators were in their home states, on April 5, some Americans actually started to lose their benefits – at a rate of 200,000 a week, the National Employment Law Project estimates. Indeed, this month alone, up to 1 million people will lose aid if some extension bill does not pass.

Members of Congress from both parties have stressed that the jobless benefits are not stimulus so much as necessary aid. “We will have to do things like extend unemployment benefits,” Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) told Fox News. “That’s not a job stimulator. … We will do those things to take care of the families that are suffering right now.”

Thus, the pressure is on for Congress to act. According to parliamentary procedure, it will take a bare minimum of four days for the Senate to pass the benefits extension — and likely longer. To provide benefits to those who have lost them since April 5 and to those who will before the bill’s passage, Senate Democrats plan to push through a provision making the extension of benefits retroactive.

Two Senate aides say that Republican senators will offer pay-go and possibly other amendments to the benefits extension. Those amendments will likely delay the passage of the bill — meaning more people will lose benefits, if only temporarily.

If and when the Senate passes this month-long extension, it will need to take the exact same issue up again by May 5 — a point annoying Senate Democrats, a Senate aide says. Therefore, Democratic leadership has placed a long-term jobless benefits extension into the Tax Extender’s Act, currently in the House. But Democrats are scrambling to find additional funding sources for those benefits.

Speaking at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., he warned of the hard times to come and emphasized the urgent need for decisive action, even as Republican leaders have indicated that they will not agree to a major spending increase without careful deliberation.

“For every day we wait or point fingers or drag our feet, more Americans will lose their jobs,” Obama said. “More families will lose their savings. More dreams will be deferred and denied. And our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.”

He also warned that his plan, which is expected to cost upward of $750 billion, will increase the $1.2 trillion deficit the country is already facing.

“There is no doubt that the cost of this plan will be considerable,” he said. “It will certainly add to the budget deficit in the short-term. But equally certain are the consequences of doing too little or nothing at all, for that will lead to an even greater deficit of jobs, incomes, and confidence in our economy.”

In a possible indication that he will seek to change the dialogue on the role of government, Obama dismissed the virtues of small government and pressed the need for strong and steady intervention in the economy.

“Only government can provide the short-term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe,” he said. “Only government can break the vicious cycles that are crippling our economy –- where a lack of spending leads to lost jobs which leads to even less spending; where an inability to lend and borrow stops growth and leads to even less credit.”

He also channeled President John F. Kennedy, albeit a bit less eloquently, insisting “that the first question each of us asks isn’t ‘What’s good for me?’ but ‘What’s good for the country my children will inherit?’”

Congress will soon begin hammering out the details of the recovery plan, which Obama hopes to sign into law within weeks of taking office Jan. 20.

UPDATE 12:10 PM: House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) just responded to Obama’s speech. They were generally supportive, although they expressed some reservations about the details of the plan. Boehner insisted on “striking the right balance” between economic stimulus and fiscal restraint, while McConnell maintained that aid to states should be in the form of loans, not grants. McConnell said that at least two states don’t need any aid, and “it hardly makes sense to give money to states that don’t need it.”

Clearly, the Republicans find themselves in a tough spot. Obstructing the passage of a stimulus plan in a time of dire economic need would make them easy scapegoats for the country’s struggles. But they need to gain bargaining power in negotiating the details of the plan so that they can turn it to their ideological favor. It’ll be interesting to see how they pick their battles in the weeks to come.