Sen. Bernie Sanders called on the Federal Reserve to act aggressively to address the jobs crisis in America. A new Fed stimulus plan announced on Wednesday falls short, Sanders said. " I want to see the Fed respond to the unemployment crisis with the same urgency that it responded to the crisis on Wall Street." Sanders suggestion: A $300 billion emergency lending program for small businesses would create more than 3 million jobs in the United States.

"At a time when 16.2 percent of the American people are unemployed or under-employed, the Fed needs to act aggressively," Sanders said. "There is a jobs crisis in this country today that is every bit as bad as the financial crisis was in 2008.

During the financial crisis, the Fed provided more than $16 trillion in low-interest loans to large financial institutions, foreign central banks, multi-national corporations, and some of the wealthiest people in the world. Those were  among the findings of a Government Accountability Office audit performed pursuant to a Sanders provision in last year's Wall Street reform law.