Adding on to this, the five dollars for every dollar spent makes sense in some contexts. It’s a key factor in support of federally funded basic research like NASA, NSF, DARPA, etc. I actually believe this based on the reports I’ve seen for NASA spin offs.

But what AOC is talking about is not basic research, which has a multiplicative effect because it opens up new technologies, new products, and new industries. A New Deal is work for works sake, and economically substitutive... so the return is actually less than a dollar for every dollar spent.