Defense Supplemental Appropriates $4.4 Billion For Construction

Both houses of Congress begin debate this week on the fiscal 2009 Defense Supplemental Appropriations bill, which has been reported out of the conference committee. The $106 billion measure funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan includes a little over $4.4 billion for military and other construction projects. The Defense Department will get $2.7 billion for various construction projects, including $263 million to complete construction projects at the Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland and the Dewitt Army Hospital at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. An additional $488 million is included for construction at other stateside military hospitals, and $170 million for a data center for the National Security Agency.

The State Department is getting $896 million for a new embassy and some consulate buildings in Pakistan. The Army Corps of Engineers is provided $847 million for barrier island and ecosystem restoration projects in the Gulf states, to repair hurricane damage from the last several years.

Budget Conference Committee Members Not Yet Named

Although Congress reconvened yesterday, facing the task of reconciling the House and Senate budget resolutions for the next five years, it seems the members of a conference committee to work on that task will not be named by House and Senate leaders until next week. The big conflict will not be about the dollars, but rather about whether or not to include reconciliation instructions in the conference legislation, which would mean that Senate approval would only require 51 votes rather than the 60 otherwise needed under Senate rules.

House Passes Final Stimulus Bill

On a strict party line vote of 246 yeas and 183 nays, the House of Representatives passed the conference committee version of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Friday afternoon, with no Republican members voting in favor of the legislation, and despite the fact that the tax titles of the conference committee version are still not available for review by Congressmen. The House Rules Committee website does have up the appropriations titles and the conference committee explanatory statement of both the appropriations and taxation revisions made in conference.

School Modernization Funding Restored In Part

At the urging of House Democrats, the Conference Committee has restored funding of $6 billion for school modernization and repairs to the total $789.5 billion cost of the American Recovery and Reconstruction Act, slated to be voted on in the House tomorrow and in the Senate Friday, and likely to be signed by President Obama as soon as the bill can be enrolled and delivered to the Oval Office. Total appropriation for construction projects of all sorts is $145,632,000,000.00.

The cost figure was held in large part by cutting President Obama's middle class tax cut from $500 per individual or $1,000 per family down to $400 per individual and $800 per family. Other tax measure reductions include elimination of the deductibility of car loan interest, and restrictions on availability of the home purchase tax credit and business loss tax carry backs.

The airwaves will undoubtedly be filled to overflowing for the next two days with analysis and commentary respecting the details of this legislative measure, as well as steamy political rhetoric from the extremes of both parties regarding what they had to give up to get a bill which can pass both houses of Congress. Economists of various stripes will debate ad nauseam whether or not this particular formulation of spending and tax relief will reinvigorate the American economy.

To me, passage of the bill will mean at least this: there is a profit opportunity of $7.25 billion or more out there for businesses in the construction industry which position themselves to take advantage of it.

Construction Stimulus Totals $145.632 Billion

The conferees have agreed on a breakdown of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, to be voted on Thursday in the House and Friday in the Senate, including total appropriations of $145,632,000,000 for construction projects.

Stimulus Top Line Now $789.5 Billion

The Conference Committee has reached agreement on the overall price of the stimulus legislation at $789.5 billion, with details remaining to be hashed out. The bill is expected on the House floor Thursday and the Senate floor Friday.

Stimulus Bill Goes To Conference

Tuesday afternoon, February 10, the Senate passed the Nelson-Collins version of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act by a vote of 61-37. As expected, Senators Collins, Snowe and Specter crossed the aisle to support the measure. The Congressional Budget Office prices the Senate version at $838.2 billion, somewhat more than both the House version costs, at $819 billion, and the cap Collins, Snowe and Specter say they will accept in a final bill, at $800 billion.

House and Senate conferees to be named will meet as soon as possible in efforts to hammer out the differences between the two versions of this legislation, in hopes of presenting an agreed bill on the floor of both houses Friday for a final vote, before the recess scheduled to begin Saturday.

The most contentious issues to be faced by the conference committee are:

SPENDING:

School construction funds of $20.1 billion, completely gutted in the Senate.

State fiscal stabilization appropriations which the Senate cut severely.

TAXES

Alternative Minimum tax patch added by the Senate.

Full repeal of the 3% tax on government contractors.

The Senate added "golf cart" tax credit.

OTHER

E-verify requirement.

H-1B visa ban for TARP recipients.

Buy American requirements.

Broadband open access requirements.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer have both promised to keep Congress in session until a bill is sent over to the Oval Office for signature. Meanwhile, President Obama takes Air Force One from one economically depressed community to another, stumping in support of quick passage of the package.

If you are interested in perusing the text of the 778 page Senate version of this legislation, you can find a link to it at the lower right hand corner of the front page of my website:
James G. McConnell - Home.

Senate Debates Stimulus - House Prepares For Conference

While floor debate on President Obama's economic stimulus measure proceeds amendment by amendment in the Senate, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer announced today that the House will be in session Monday to begin work on a joint House/Senate Conference Committee version of the legislation. Speaker Pelosi says the bill is still on track to reach the Oval Office before Valentine's Day.

Senators Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Susan Collins of Maine will be offering a bipartisan amendment aimed at stripping non-stimulative appropriations out of the spending side of the bill, such as Interior Department and Agriculture Department new computers, along with funds for HIV screening, wildlife management and NASA. As it stood late Wednesday afternoon February 3, the cost of the Senate version of the measure exceeded $900 billion. The major additions approved thus far have been an $11 billion tax credit for car purchasers, and $6.5 billion for National Institutes of Health research projects.

Senators Patty Murray and Diane Feinstein are preparing another attempt to increase spending for construction by $13 billion for highways, $7 billion for water and sewer construction, and $5 billion for transit construction, to be offset by cuts in other programs.

Senator Charles Schumer wants an even bigger increase for transit funding, of $6.5 billion rather than the $5 billion Feinstein and Murray will propose.

Domestic steel mills are fighting to keep the "buy American" requirements for construction steel in the measure, while other interest are assuring trading partners the protectionist requirements will not exceed those already in existence in general Congressional appropriation measures.

Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia will offer a proposal to double the home buyer tax credit from $7,500 up to $15,000, and remove the restriction to first time buyers, at a cost of $20 billion.

President Obama, at a White House meeting Wednesday afternoon, urged key Senators not to "make the perfect the enemy of the essential" in finalizing the measure, and remarked that the recession will turn into "a catastrophe" if legislation is not on his desk before Presidents' Day.