Contractors Should Always Say “We” Instead of “I”

You spend a considerable sum of cash to have your lawyer set up your contracting business as a corporation, an LLC or LLP, so that your backhoe, your pickup and your tools may be at risk, but your house, your Cadillac and the money you have set aside for sending the kids to college is not exposed. Then you walk onto a job site or into a customer’s office and tell them “I guarantee the work,” and all that costly legal paperwork goes right down the drain.

As a court in Pennsylvania recently held, and as most other courts would follow, using the word “I” can expose you to personal liability where your business would otherwise be the only entity responsible under a contract or statute respecting the project. “We” refers to your corporation, company, business or firm; “I” refers to yourself personally – you can’t afford to ever forget the difference.

The Pennsylvania case is Bennett v. A.T. Masterpiece Homes, 2012 Pa. Super 60 (2012). Two home buyers sued A.T. Masterpiece LLC and its managing member Grant Colledge for construction defects in their brand new homes. A jury verdict against both A.T. Masterpiece and Colledge personally was affirmed on appeal, though Colledge argued that the home buyers had contracted only with A.T. Masterpiece, and not with him individually. The Pennsylvania Superior Court, in affirming the verdict and judgment against Colledge individually, held that Colledge’s statements at the construction sites to the homeowners that “I guarantee it,” or “I will take care of it,” constituted a personal assumption of liabilities for correcting the work of his business which he would not have had in the absence of his remarks.

So, whether your name is Colledge, Walsh, Turner, Pepper or something else, “we” refers to your contracting business, and “I” refers to yourself personally – you forget the distinction at considerable financial peril.

Illinois Tollway TriLevel Bridge Resurfacing Cuts Project Time And Budget, Adding Motoring Headaches

The Illinois Toll Highway Authority will spend $13 million and the next four months resurfacing the trilevel bridge connecting I-294 with I-90 near Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. By closing all lanes to traffic at the same time the project will take four months instead of seven months, and will relaize cost savings by using a single pour to resurface all lanes of the bridge, which has not been entirely replace since it was first built in 1958.

Construction complications on the project include FAA height restrictions on the equipment contractors can use on the job, due to proximity to O’Hare departure and approach pathways, as well as a lengthy detour taking motorists through two toll plazas. The Tollway promises to collect only a single toll along the detour route, though.

Housing Starts Down, Housing Permits Up: What Does It All Mean?

February housing starts dropped 1.1% from January’s level, but permits for housing construction rose 5%, according to the Department of Commerce numbers. After earlier recessions in the U. S. economy, housing construction accounted for 15% or more of economic growth. Since this recession officially ended in June 2009, housing construction has accounted for only 4% of growth in the American economy.

In today’s market, new home sales are competing with deeply depressed prices for foreclosed and short sale homes, severely restricting the historical contribution of new housing construction to economic recovery. In a healthy economy, a new home typically sells for  15% premium over a comparable existing house. Today that premium has doubled to 30%.  According to the National Association of Home Builders, each new home creates three jobs for a year, and generates $90,000 in tax revenues to various government units. Without this stimulus, our economic growth has stagnated at alarmingly low rates.

National Resources Defense Council Lawsuits Could Bring A Boom in Sewer Plant Construction

According to the National Association of Clean Water Agencies, two lawsuits filed in federal courts in New York and Louisiana could spur a $280 billion boom in sewer plant construction and renovation, if courts rule that the USEPA must regulate sewer effluent nutrient content more stringently.  NRDC challenges EPA regulations permitting each state to set numeric limits for nitrogen and phosphorous in sewer effluent, and attacks USEPA’s refusal to act on its 2007 petition requesting the addition of nutrient removal to current secondary treatment requirements under the Clean Water Act.

NRDC is asking the courts to require USEPA to issue and enforce a requirement that every sewage treatment plant in the United States use the best available technology to limit phosphorous and nitrogen in sewage effluent, in order to reduce giant sized algae blooms in the Gulf of Mexico and Chesapeake Bay.

Can The Construction Industry Absorb Capital Intensive Fabricator Failures?

The recent defaults and plant shut downs by curtain wall fabricators Trainor Glass of Farmers Branch, Texas on February 22, 2012, and ASI Ltd. of Whitestown, Indiana, just before last Christmas, raise the question whether fabricators and suppliers of cladding, structural steel, precast concrete and various piping products, all of whom have relatively large capital investments in plant and equipment, can survive in this market of shrinking orders for their products on major construction projects.

While a performance and payment bond surety may step forward to keep production flowing for a time, as apparently happened in the case of ASI Ltd’s. subcontract  for cladding on the Brooklyn, N.Y. Barclays Center, it is especially unclear where such financial assistance could come from on privately funded jobs without performance bonding protection. Besides the tragedy of hundreds of skilled tradespeople suddenly out of work, and general contractors scrambling to locate and mobilize alternative fabrication sources, the collapse of fabricator availability for such critical building systems bodes very poorly for any construction industry recovery to economic health in the long run. Specifying architects, construction managers, and general contractors bidding for work on future construction projects of any sort need to exercise extreme care in evaulating the economic viability of their fabricators of critical systems across the entire timeline of any project. Otherwise, the economic difficulties of one fabricator can spill across the entire project, and threaten the survival of every trade involved.

Mayor Emmanuel Announces Chicago Infrastructure Trust

With the think tank promoted concept of revenue stream repayment to private investors in government infrastructure construction projects languishing in legislative limbo in Washington DC and Springfield, Chicago’s newly elected Mayor Rahm Emmanuel has stuck out his neck with the announcement of formation of a Chicago Infrastructure Trust to attract private funding for city building energy retrofits, a rapid ride bus system, and extension of the southern end of the CTA red line light rail service.  Local officials of Citibank and JP Morgan Asset Management have expressed “preliminary non-binding interest” in ivesting in the Trust.

Emmanuel made the announcement in a speech to Carpenter Union trainees at an appresticeship shop March 1, 2012. Acknowledging the ongoing declines in federal and state funding for infrastructure construction, Emmanuel told the aspiring union carpenters “Our needs are growing. I can either look at that challenge, and stare at it hoping it gets better, or do something about it.” Whether the “non-binding interest” by private investors will materialze into real dollars invested remains to be seen.

Obama’s Jobs Speech

Thursday evening September 8 at 7 p.m. Washington D. C. time President Obama will speak to a joint session of Congress about initiatives he is proposing to put 25.4 million unemployed and underemployed Americans back to work in a growing economy. Outside Obama’s senior staff no one is exactly certain what his proposals will include, but we expect to hear him talk about the following, not necessarily in the order presented here:

Construction Industry

About half of the Obama Administration proposals will be aimed directly at the ultra-high unemployment among skilled construction tradespeople:

FAA Reauthorization

The current temporary reauthorization of funding for the FAA expires September 16. When Congressman John Mica forced a shutdown of FAA runway and tower construction projects, that Congressional action stopped work on $2.5 billion of infrastructure construction until Transportation Secretary LaHood pushed through emergency legislation to put tradespeople back to work on these projects. The money to pay these workers will stop flowing again on September 17 unless a clean FAA reauthorization bill is enacted and signed into law by then, or another temporary extension is passed.

Surface Transportation Reauthorization

There has not been the customary six year Highway Trust Fund reauthorization since Obama took office. Instead, highway, water and rail transportation infrastructure construction across the country has been financed by a series of three and six month temporary extensions. Some of the slack has been taken up by stimulus appropriations, but the stimulus was intended to add to, not substitute for, regular surface transportation initiatives, and as a result, the economy has not been stimulated.

House Republicans on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee are proposing to slash the level of appropriations from past legislation by more than half. Look for Obama to seek $550 billion in appropriations over the next six years, rather than the $230 billion Republican six year proposal.

Infrastructure Bank

The idea of a federal infrastructure bank to draw private investment into toll highway, rail and port facility construction – projects in which private investors could earn a reasonable return on their investment – has succeeded in facilitating infrastructure construction in Europe and elsewhere. This is a pet project of the Obama administration, plus there are two versions of proposals already put forward by Senator John Kerry (D. Mass.) – who proposes a $10 billion federal start up appropriation – and Representative Rosa DeLauro (D. Conn.) - who proposes $25 billion in federal seed money. Both versions would include investments in highway, rail, waterway, drinking water and sewage treatment, and energy projects. DeLauro’s version would also include broadband communications construction.

Commercial Building Retrofits

Another proposal which has been the subject of Obama administration trial balloons lately is the idea of a tax incentive to promote private investment in retrofitting existing commercial buildings for greater energy efficiency. This would put thousands of skilled tradespeople back to work without any direct federal expenditure, and would bring millions of private dollars now on the sidelines back into our economy. Also, it has the additional factor of appealing to Republicans, who are more likely to support an initiative that looks like a tax cut for business. Apparently Obama’s Jobs and Competitiveness Council is behind this proposal.

School Building Renovations

This proposal will be buried in the middle of the speech somewhere. Obama is always an advocate for improving the education systems of America, but because this particular initiative would involve new direct federal expenditures, it will likely draw strong opposition from across the aisle.

Broadband Tower Construction

While the stimulus early in Obama’s term appropriated a great deal of cash for studying the broadband needs of unserved and underserved areas of the nation, there has not been a lot of actual communication tower construction with those funds. Only about 68% of U. S. land area is currently covered by broadband communication networks – Obama will seek expansion of that coverage to 98%. This is another program which could bring private investment into play with minimal direct federal expenditures, as revenue from broadband users could ultimately repay investors for most of the cost of connecting outlying populations to cable TV and the internet.

Power Grid Modernization

This has been another favorite of Obama’s, as part of his alternative energy initiatives and climate change reduction legislation. Of course, power grid modernization should also attract considerable private investment from utility companies if the right incentives are enacted. And, significant segments of the skilled construction trades would be put back to work should power grid construction expand significantly. The massive outages on the east coast from recent storm damage will highlight the need for this sort of infrastructure investment.

Local Construction Initiatives

You may not hear anything about this one in Obama’s speech, but Representative Judy Biggert (R. Ill. 13^th District) announced a couple weeks ago that Veterans Administration Secretary Eric Shinseki has approved construction to transform the old Silver Cross Hospital building in Joliet, Illinois into a 60,000 s.f. VA outpatient clinic to serve the growing south suburban population of returning veterans. Silver Cross is moving into a new hospital facility in New Lenox.

Other Obama Proposals

Of course the construction industry won’t be the president’s only target for economic improvement. His speech will likely also include initiatives like tax incentives, direct federal expenditures, and cutting red tape to improve the economic competitiveness of American private enterprise. In the tax incentive category, look for proposals to extend the temporary 2% reduction in payroll tax rates; a tax credit for putting new employees on company payrolls; and an additional tax credit for hiring returning armed forces veterans. Proposed direct federal expenditures could include further extension of unemployment benefits for out of work Americans; assistance to local school districts for hiring more teachers; and specialized job training programs aimed at the long term unemployed. Finally, in the competitiveness category, we expect Obama to push ratification of three pending free trade treaties; and improvements in patent law to speed up commercialization of new American inventions.

Would A Chicago Casino Bring Construction Jobs?

Short answer: Maybe.

To begin with, the Chicago Casino Development Authority created by the bill now on Governor Quinn’s desk awaiting signature would have to decide whether it wants a land based casino or a riverboat. Chicago has no shipyard, so if the Authority opts for a floating mecca of gaming, the only construction jobs for Chicagoans would be those involved in the land side ancillary facilities like restaurants, taverns and a parking garage. This would cut the local casino construction workforce by about half.

If the Authority chooses a land based facility, the question is how construction of such a casino would be financed, given the cash strapped situation of city government and local taxpayers at the present moment. It would be possible for the Authority to attract private capital to the project by requesting proposals for private construction of the physical facilities, which would then be leased to the Authority for operation of the gaming establishment. Private investors would recover their capital investment with agreed upon earnings through lease payments from the Authority, while the Authority would not have to borrow in order to finance the construction. The land based casino would become operational faster, since private developers would be more free to employ an accelerated design/build program than the Authority, constrained by “lowest responsible bidder” requirements of public construction laws, could ever do.

Given that most of the sites proposed for development of the Chicago casino are on property already owned by others, it would be easy enough for the Authority to specify the details of casino construction through a leasehold work letter like the ones office building or store tenants use to set out the requirements for building out the space they will occupy in a leased building or space. The Authority would retain control of the appearance and layout of the finished product, while the private owner would finance and contract for construction of the facility. The work letter could even require the Authority’s landlord to adhere to City mandated requirements for minority and women participation, and use of local tradespeople on the project.

If Governor Quinn signs the bill, Mayor Emmanuel will appoint the members of the Authority board, and I look for the Board to do everything possible to attract private capital to construction of the new casino – on land if there is any political interest in keeping the construction dollars in the city rather than in a shipyard in another state. The same sort of legal arrangements used when our generous local philanthropists donated a quarter billion dollars to enhancement of Millennium Park can both attract private investment to a Chicago casino project, and avoid the delays inherent in public bidding and contracting for actual construction of the facility. Rahm is a very smart Mayor, and the precedents are all in place. I’m looking for a land based casino built with private funds, and leased by the Authority. Hammers could be swinging within a year if our political leaders act quickly.

Illinois Tax Hikes Driving Business Investment Out Of State

Knowledgeable observers predicted early in this legislative session that a major hike in state taxes would drive business investment out of state, and developments in neighboring states are already proving them correct. For example, 112 commercial and industrial construction projects worth $8.9 billion are already underway in 2011 just across the lake in Michigan.

The electric power industry in Michigan leads the way with 37 projects totaling $5.2 billion, representing 58% of new industrial construction investment in Michigan for 2011. The largest single power industry project in Michigan is the 765 KV Lower Peninsula Transmission Line, a 700 mile overhead extra high voltage transmission line extending into Ohio. American Electric Power Company will commence construction of this project this summer.

General industrial manufacturing construction, including auto industry plant expansions, accounts for 20 projects worth $1.4 billion, followed by 21 pharmaceutical and biotechnology investments totaling $467 million.

Illinois could have benefited greatly from the jobs created by this construction investment, as well as the new jobs in the completed or expanded facilities. Our state economy desperately needs new high tech jobs, but the income tax increase enacted by our legislature and signed by our governor is driving the money, construction jobs and manufacturing jobs across the lake.

Republican Subcommittee Chairman Lauds Obama Housing Smackdown

Illinois’ 13th District Republican Representative Judy Biggert, Chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Insurance, Housing and Community Opportunity, is looking forward to joining with other committee Republicans to quickly extract the federal government from its role as primary financial risk taker in the housing market in this country. Joining in the Obama Treasury Department attack on any continuing role for federal housing subsidies in the form of residential mortgage guarantees, Biggert said in her E-mail message to constituents yesterday: “Taxpayers cannot continue to shoulder the financial risks associated with [federally chartered mortgage guarantors] Fannie [Mae] and Freddie [Mac]. … Our goal should be to choose a path that will quickly and prudently wind down the government’s role and restore stability to the housing market.”

In other words, Republican leaders are climbing aboard the Obama Treasury train of proposed measures which will raise home mortgage interest rates, cut back availability of 30 year fixed rate mortgages to even the most creditworthy borrowers, and altogether eliminate availability of low down payment lending to first time homebuyers. If you don’t already own your home, the American Dream may be pulling out of your station and rapidly receding into the distance as the train whistle hoots its demise. In a long awaited white paper released yesterday by Treasury, the Obama administration proposes cutting the size of mortgages Fannie and Freddie can purchase from private lenders, from the present $729,750 down to $625,500 as soon as the third quarter of 2011. Minimum required down payments will go up to 10% for conventional loans, and rise from the current 3.5% up to 5% for FHA first time buyer mortgages.

Finally, Treasury proposes increasing the fees Fannie and Freddie charge conventional lenders for guaranteeing the mortgages these lenders underwrite.

In a related Obama administration attack aimed specifically at lower income home owners, the administration proposes a $2.5 billion reduction in the LIHEAP home heating fuel assistance program. What’s the point in owning your home if you can’t afford to heat it?

While, admittedly, excesses in home mortgage lending, and the securitization of home loans into derivative instruments, contributed heavily to the near collapse of worldwide financial markets and drove the U. S. economy into the worst recession in decades, it is beginning to look like the Obama administration’s use of a purgative on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could be the cure that proves worse than the disease. Available credit for both the construction and purchase of new homes has already dried up into a syrupy consistency clogging the arteries of any hope for quick recovery in the construction sector of the American economy, and the Obama Treasury Department recommendations for home mortgage market reform will keep construction workers, trade contractors and home builders on the sidelines of the economic recovery for years to come.

U. S. Northeast Sees Construction Investment Launches

Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania are looking forward to fourth quarter launches of planned major construction projects with a total investment value of over $2.3 billion. Leading the way are the industrial manufacturing and biotech-pharmaceutical sectors of the economy, with 25 biotech or drug making projects worth $572 million, and 17 industrial manufacturing projects worth $715 million.

Examples include the $175 million Fisker Automotive renovation and expansion of the former GM plant in Wilmington, Delaware, to produce plug in hybrid cars, mostly for export. The completed 3.2 million square foot facility is expected to go into production in 2012, and to be making up to 100,000 cars and trucks a year by 2014. One of the big biotech projects will be expansion of the Cornell University Department of Food Science Stocking Hall laboratory to a 145,000 square foot facility at an investment of $105 million under the construction management of Gilbane Building Company. Construction of the Stocking Hall expansion at Cornell is expected to take four years.

Husky Energy Moves Forward on Diesel Desulfurization

Calgary based Husky Energy Inc. plans a diesel hydrogen treatment facility with capacity to produce 25,000 barrels per day of low sulfur diesel fuel, with construction to begin in 2013. Approval for construction is expected in 2012, with selection of an engineering, procurement and construction contractor the same year. Husky is a refiner, marketer and distributor of gasoline, diesel fuel, asphalt, ethanol, and aviation and specialty fuels in Canada and the U.S.

Overseas Cement Gambles

Foreign cement manufacturers are staking hundreds of millions of dollars on investment in new cement production capacity, betting that construction activity will pick up rapidly in their corners of the globe. MerchantBridge of London and LaFarge SA of Paris invested $220 million in expansion of a cement factory in Karbala, Iraq, and MerchantBridge has obtained a license to construct a new two million ton per year cement factory less than ten miles away from the expanded Karbala facility. Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh predicts Iraq will invest $200 billion in infrastructure construction over the next four year period – hence the need for a dramatic increase in cement production capacity.

Meanwhile, Brazil’s Votorantim Cementos SA is investing $1.47 billion in construction of eight new cement making facilities in Brazil, bring Votorantim’s Brazilian capacity to 35 plants producing 42 million tons of cement per year. Votorantim also owns cement making plants in Bolivia, Canada, the United States and Chile.

Small Business Lending Restricted By Market Forces

Average people and many small businesses needing working capital are finding their usual lenders have no money to lend them, severely crippling job growth in this slowly recovering economy. Why? Because the megacorporations who really don’t need to borrow are in fact borrowing and hoarding huge sums merely because they are able to issue debt at amazingly low interest rates. While Microsoft and other huge borrowers are placing huge bond issues at interest rates so low any of us would gladly have them instead of our current historically low home mortgage interest rates, these companies are not investing the borrowed funds in new, factories, equipment or payroll expansion. Instead, they are hoarding the cash until the economy improves, effectively drying up sources of working capital for the smaller business which would love to hire and grow of only they had working capital to fund their expansion.

Energy Policy Difficulties Put Power Plant Construction On Hold

The Navajo Nation planned to build a 1,500 megawatt coal fired power plant on its reservation in New Mexico, and expected to earn $50 million per year from sales of electric power produced by the new facility. Earlier this week the Obama administration's EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson moved to revoke the project's permit and block construction of the plant. John Walke, EPA's Clean Air Director, says the move was closely coordinated with the White House as part of President Obama's agenda to combat global warming. U. S. Chamber of Commerce Vice President for the Environment William Kovacs says there are between 60 and 70 power plant construction projects stalled by EPA permit issues.

Meanwhile, the debate over proposed cap and trade legislation limiting CO2 emissions, and over FERC authority to establish routing of new power transmission grid lines stalls legislation which will let the construction of new technology power generation facilities move forward. Finally, the debates over whether hydroelectric power plants and nuclear reactor generated power do or do not count as "renewable energy" production are delaying groundbreaking of facilities for power production using those modalities. Unless Congress and the related executive agencies can get their acts together, there won't be any new power plants or transmission lines built using either new or old technologies any time soon.

Experts Predict Stimulus Construction Spending Effect Late This Year

Economists for the AIA and the AGCA predict improvement in the state of the construction sector of the economy as a result of the economic stimulus appropriations, but not until the third quarter, and perhaps not as much improvement as hoped for. Kermit Baker, chief economist for the American Institute of Architects told Reuters News Service in an interview that the appropriations "will put some people to work as soon as next month, but will not be a major factor until the third quarter. ... contractors will use existing workers before they bring back people who have been laid off, or start to hire new people."

Ken Simonson, chief economist for the Associated General Contractors of America, told his organization that the appropriations are "not going to be enough to bail out construction right away ... but it's a start."

Sewer Funding To Advance In House

A floor vote could come this week in the House on the $13.8 billion appropriation over the next five years for waste water treatment construction, mostly through the Clean Water State Revolving Fund. Contact your state's clean water agency to see which projects are on tap for bidding once this legislation passes and is signed by the President in the next couple weeks.

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.

Laws and Sausages

Bologna, Italy is famous for its law school, and more famous for its sausages. And the folks in Bologna say that it's best for people never to see how either laws or sausages are made. The progress of the economic stimulus legislation through Congress proves them absolutely right.

Senate Appropriations and Finance Committees are busy marking up their versions of the economic stimulus tax and spending bills, and they don't agree on very much with the House version, which will go to the House floor Wednesday afternoon January 28 for a vote. The senate version of the spending part of the package allocates about the same total dollars as the House bill, but distributes it a little differently from the House version. The good news for the construction industry is that total spending for construction projects is about the same in both houses of Congress. And things may get even better. It would not be unheard of for the conference committee which will be formed to reconcile the two versions during the next couple weeks to increase total spending so that each agency gets whichever total is higher between House and Senate appropriations.

If that does happen, the total spending for construction projects will increase from about $153.3 billion up to as much as $168.7 billion.

Without accounting for the ongoing committee markups which will change these totals, the principal differences between House and Senate appropriations for construction look like this:

The Senate version gives $2 billion more for elementary school construction, but takes away $2.5 billion for colleges.

The Senate cuts $450 million from defense energy efficiency projects, but adds $900 million for defense family housing and child care facilities.

The Senate adds $6.3 billion for cleanup of old military bases and weapons production facilities.

The Senate adds $2.5 billion for VA hospitals and medical clinics.

The Senate cuts $3.4 billion from water navigation and flood control projects, and cuts $1.1 billion from drinking water projects.

The Senate cuts $3 billion from highway construction, adding $400 million to public transit construction and $4.5 billion for purchase of light rail and bus rolling stock.

The Senate cuts $1.7 billion from airport construction.
The Senate cuts $400 million from Section 8 housing construction, and cuts $1.6 billion from neighborhood stabilization.

The Senate adds $300 million to Superfund.

It also looks like the Senate version will roll back the Customs and Border Protection directive that lumber, steel and cement suppliers repay anti-dumping finds they received earlier this decade under the Byrd Amendment.

Senate Finance ranking member Charles Grassley wants to increase tax credits for wind energy from $13 billion to $20 billion as part of the economic stimulus package, and tax breaks for the construction industry may also include lifting of the tax on debt restructuring for two years, and eliminating the repayment requirement from homebuyer tax credit, as well as increasing the credit from $7,500 up to $20,000, and eliminating the restriction to first time buyers.

Finally, the Senate version could contain a $70 billion alternative minimum tax patch, and a 75% exclusion of capital gains tax on sale of shares in small businesses if the shares have been held over 5 years.

There will undoubtedly be more changes in the Senate markups, and the Conference Committee report in the next couple weeks. Bottom line, in all likelihood there will be a bill on President Obama's desk before Valentine's Day, and it will still include more than $150 billion for construction projects.

President Obama Personally Pushes Stimulus Legislation

President Obama met with House and Senate leadership from both parties in the Roosevelt Room of the White House Friday morning January 23 to push for quick adoption of the pending economic stimulus legislation. Acknowledging that the legislative package is a "heavy lift" for all concerned, Obama repeated his prediction the new spending and tax cuts will create between three million and four million new jobs. He said "it appears we are on target to make our Presidents' Day weekend," referring to the upcoming Congressional recess and the day he expects to sign the legislation.

The bills have been reported out of the House Ways and Means, Appropriations and Energy and Commerce Committees, and a floor vote is expected in the House Wednesday, January 28, according to Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland. Markups are expected to begin in the Senate Appropriations and Finance Committees Tuesday, January 27, even before the House passes the measure.

Complaints about the package can be heard from both sides of the legislative aisles, including Highways and Transit Subcommittee Chairman Peter DeFazio's remark that the construction portion of the spending measure is "a pathetic amount of money just to deal with deferred maintenance," and House Minority Leader Boehner's comment that the measure "spends too much and spends it too late." Nevertheless, the $153 billion appropriated for construction projects remains intact.

Meanwhile, business lobbyists are opposing the "buy American" provisions regarding steel for construction and hardware and software for medical record computerization which have been written into the legislation, on the grounds that such protectionist legislation will ultimately hurt American exports to other countries, China in particular. Executives of certain tech industry companies, though, praise the appropriation of $40 billion for IT projects, asserting that such spending will create 949,000 technology jobs, more than half in small businesses.

Next week's Senate committee markups will determine whether the package can gather bipartisan support, or whether voting is likely to fall out along strict party lines.