As Congress headed for its year-end recess, the House delivered encouraging news to the construction industry, approving a jobs-producing, $154-billion economic-stimulus measure that includes about $47 billion for infrastructure work in several market sectors. The bill, approved on Dec. 16 by a slim 217-212 margin, would be a follow-on to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. But the Senate, enmeshed in protracted action on major health-care legislation, will not even take up a jobs bill until it returns in January from its break.
Senate Assistant Majority Leader Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Democratic Policy Committee Chairman Byron Dorgan (N.D.) are gathering jobs-bill ideas, Dorgan says. Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) adds, “We are looking very much at the items that the House had...in terms of construction, infrastructure funding, support for states, clean energy.”