The House on Wednesday by a vote of 244 to 188 passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, better known as the Stimulus Package. The Senate is expected to take up its version next week. The Senate version differs from the House version in funding totals for significant programs.

AGC members were at the forefront of this legislative struggle, sending nearly 10,000 letters, delivering a petition signed by over 3,000 supporters and making thousands of phone calls to Capitol Hill in support of the construction portion of this legislation. The package includes significant funding for all of the major construction markets, in most cases exceeding typical yearly appropriations. The funds generally have to be put to work in 180 days, with unobligated funds reprogrammed by their disbursing agencies. All funds in the bill are required to be spent within 2 years.

With the debate now in the Senate, we strongly urge you to reach out to your employees, your suppliers, your subcontractors and your local government and business community leaders to ask them to use the tools on the AGC Web site to contact your Senators. Visit www.agc.org/stimulus for more information.

Highlights of the Stimulus Package

• Building Infrastructure Funding: Approximately $55 billion in Building Infrastructure, including: $6.7 billion for GSA buildings; $8.5 billion for Military Construction; and $1 billion for VA Construction – all distributed at the discretion of the particular federal agency of jurisdiction. This also includes $20 billion for K-12 School and Higher Ed Construction, distributed by Title I formulas for K-12 and by a new formula for Higher Ed.
• Highway and Transportation Infrastructure Funding: Over $46 billion for transportation infrastructure, including: $30 billion for bridge and highway funding, to be distributed by existing formulas, with a portion of the funds within each state being sub-allocated by population areas; $12 billion for transit funding, with new construction being distributed on a discretionary basis, and upgrades, repair, and other assistance being distributed according to existing formula; and $3 billion for Airport Improvement Grants, distributed on a discretionary basis.
• Water Infrastructure: More than $15 billion for Water Infrastructure, including: $4 billion for the Clean Water State Revolving Fund; $2 billion for the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund; and $1.5 billion specifically set aside for Rural Water and Waste Disposal projects. Water Resources construction also includes $4.5 billion for the Corps of Engineers, and $500 million for the Bureau of Reclamation.
• Tax Provisions: Permanent repeal of 3 percent withholding tax on government contractors, extension of increased small business expensing, extension of the depreciation bonus, a 5-year carry-back of net operating losses, long term extension and modification of the renewable energy tax production credit, a tax credit bond option for state and local governments, and numerous bonding provisions for energy, school construction and economic development.

Other Provisions in the Bill

• Davis-Bacon Requirements: Any projects funded directly by or assisted in whole or in part by and through the Federal Government will have Davis-Bacon wage requirements. In addition, the bill calls for the application of Davis-Bacon to any projects funded by tax bonds.
• Buy American: The House bill mandates that iron and steel used in construction and repair projects funded under the bill be produced in the United States unless found to be prohibitively expensive (by increasing the cost of the total project by 25 percent).
• Federal Contracting Requirements: The Federal Acquisition Regulation shall apply to contracts awarded with funds in the Act.  Contracts are encouraged to be awarded as fixed-price contracts through the use of competitive procedures. Any contract awarded with such funds that is not fixed-price and not awarded using competitive procedures shall be posted in a special section of the website Recovery.gov.
• E-Verify: The House bill mandates the use of the “E-Verify” electronic verification system for all businesses receiving funds derived from the stimulus, including both direct federal and federal-aid projects. Efforts are underway to get this provision removed from the final bill. The Senate may consider an amendment that would create a more expansive E-Verify requirement. This issue will likely be addressed in the House-Senate conference on the bill. 

AGC’s Ken Simonson spoke at a news conference on Capitol Hill January 27 in support of infrastructure investment as part of the stimulus package that passed the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday.  Congressman Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) hosted the event, which included representatives from the Change to Win Labor Federation, Information Technology Industry Council, AFL-CIO, Oracle Corp., and the National Electrical Contractors Association.

Simonson stressed the importance of putting the nearly 900,000 construction workers who have lost their jobs since 2006 back to work.  AGC has advocated for infrastructure and public buildings investment long before yesterday’s vote, and Simonson’s urgings to turn a grim situation into an opportunity clearly left a mark. 

Simonson’s remarks were recorded by several media outlets, including Dow Jones.  View his comments here.

More than 4,500 people registered for the January 27 webcast titled "Have We Hit Bottom?" AGC and Reed Construction Data hosted the webcast, featuring AGC's chief economist Ken Simonson and Jim Haughey, who discussed the U.S. construction market, key trends and a look ahead.

Simonson's comments were recorded in several outlets, including The Dallas Morning News. The webcast is available for download here. (Registration is free, but required.)

President Obama signed into law the first bill of his Presidency this morning.  The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act restarts the filing period for a discriminatory act each time a paycheck is issued and potentially expands the class of people able to bring discrimination claims against the employer.

The House of Representatives took up and passed the Senate version of the legislation this week and sent it quickly over to the White House.

The federal government has agreed to further delay implementation of a rule requiring federal contractors and subcontractors to use the Department of Homeland Security's E-Verify system to verify employment eligibility until May 21. An official announcement is expected to be published in the Federal Register on January 30.The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Council issued the final rule on November 14, 2008, requiring contracting officers to mandate contractor use of E-Verify in solicitations issued and contracts awarded after January 15, 2009. In response to a legal challenge to the rule, the government agreed two weeks ago to suspend the rule until February 20. Yesterday, the government agreed to delay implementation until May 21. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit requested the extension after President Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel issued a memorandum directing federal agencies to consider extending by 60 days the effective dates of all regulations already issued but not yet in effect, in order to allow the new Administration a chance to review any "questions of law and policy raised."

Click here for a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's) for Federal Contractors & E-Verify. Visit the AGC Web site for critical components of the final rule.

Dr. Stephen S. Fuller of George Mason University testified on behalf of AGC before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure on Thursday. The hearing was held to examine how infrastructure investment contributes to job creation and economic recovery.

In his testimony, Dr. Fuller noted that the current stimulus plan’s proposed infrastructure investments would create or support more than 1.85 million new jobs between now and the end of 2010.  He said these jobs would include over 620,000 construction jobs, 300,000 jobs in supplying industries and 930,000 jobs throughout the broader economy. To view the testimony, click here.

Committee Modifies Language to Speed Spend Out

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office earlier this week released a report giving its assessment of the proposed economic stimulus legislation and projected that less than half of the funds are likely to be used before the end of fiscal year 2010. The CBO said the balance would likely be spent over the next several years, after the recession is projected to end. The report specifically questions how quickly the infrastructure funds will make their way into the economy. Republican leaders said the analysis shows that the package wouldn't create the promised jobs.

AGC and coalition partners the Transportation Construction Coalition, Americans for Transportation Mobility and AASHTO responded to the report with a letter to Congress stating “This is not business as usual!” and pointing out that CBO’s analysis of the infrastructure spending is based on historical data which does not apply to the current situation. State DOTs, the construction industry, materials suppliers and labor are geared to move “ready to go” projects quickly to contract and construction and thus create thousands of jobs in this fiscal year. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the leadership of the House Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) Committee also responded by pointing out that CBO did not have the full data when they created the report. T&I Committee Chairman Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.) met with the CBO director, who admitted that they did not have the full data on which to base their projection.

In addition, the Appropriations Committee moved to clarify a section that may have slowed the spending under the bill.

By a party line vote, the House Ways and Means Committee passed the tax component of the economic stimulus bill, clearing the measure for floor consideration on January 22.  The bill would provide approximately $275 billion in tax relief for individuals, businesses and state and local governments.  A major change from the initial plan announced last week is the inclusion of the full repeal of the 3 percent withholding law on government contractors (the original proposal would have deferred the effective date one year).

Highlights of the bill benfiting the construction industry include:

• Extension of depreciation bonus
• Extension of enhanced small business expensing
• 5-year carryback of net operating losses
• Incentives to hire unemployed veterans and disconnected youth
• De minimis safe harbor exception for tax-exempt interest expense for financial institutions
• Modification of small issuer exception to tax-exempt interest expense allocation rules for financial institutions
• Eliminate costs imposed on state and local governments by the alternative minimum tax
• Creation of new Qualified School Construction Bonds
• Extension and increase in authorization for Qualified Zone Academy Bonds (QZAB)
• Tax credit bond option for state and local governments
• Repeal 3 percent withholding law on government contractors
• Recovery Zone Bonds for areas of high poverty, unemployment, or home foreclosures
• Tribal economic development bonds
• Long-term extension and modification of renewable energy production tax credit
• Temporary election to claim the investment tax credit in lieu of the production tax credit
• Repeal subsidized energy financing limitation on the investment tax credit
• Removal of dollar limitations on certain energy credits
• Additional Clean Renewable Energy Bonds (“CREBs”)
• Additional Qualified Energy Conservation Bonds

The Senate Finance Committee has yet to release details of its proposal.  The Senate package may also include language to address the 3 percent withholding law, and it is also reported that the Senate may include an AMT patch for 2010.

Because the House Appropriations Committee having also approved the spending package, the House is expected to begin floor consideration on the complete economic recovery package next week.

Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) Wednesday introduced S.292, a bill to repeal the 3 percent tax withholding requirement set to go into effect in 2011.

The bill was introduced along with Republican Senators Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), Pat Roberts (Kan.), Jim Inhofe (Okla.), David Vitter (La.), George  Voinovich (Ohio) and Johnny Isakson (Ga.).  It is the companion bill to H.R. 275 introduced in the House by Reps. Kendrick Meek (D-Fla.) and Wally Herger (R-Calif.) on January 7.  Both bills have been referred to their committees of jurisdiction, the Senate Finance Committee and House Ways and Means Committee.  AGC has made enactment of legislation to repeal the 3 percent withholding law a top legislative priority for the 111th Congress.

Full repeal of the 3 percent withholding law has been included in the House stimulus bill.

The White House issued a memorandum that orders an immediate review of proposed and final regulations coming from various federal agencies. The action will result in all regulations that are currently in the regulatory process to be approved by the Obama administration before they are published.

AGC will continue to monitor regulations that affect the construction industry and the 60 day delay that this memo will likely create for them. To view a sample of some of the current regulatory issues pending, click here.