House Approves $154 Billion Job Bill (The Wall Street Journal)
The House approved a $154 billion package aimed at stimulating the labor market with a combination of infrastructure projects, aid to states and funding for several safety-net programs.
The bill passed late Wednesday on a 217-212 vote, with no Republicans voting for the plan. The hastily assembled legislation was completed late Tuesday night, leaving lawmakers little time to study it and prompting criticism from Republicans who said it was a waste of taxpayer money.
The Senate won’t take up jobs legislation until next year, but with the highest unemployment rate in decades, House Democrats didn’t want to return to their districts for the holiday recess without taking some action. As the 2010 midterm elections near, Democrats are framing their appeal to voters on job creation while Republicans seek to tap into voter unease about the rising federal deficit.
Democrats said that half the cost of the package would come from money repaid by financial firms who received cash infusions from the Treasury’s financial stabilization program. Republicans say the law establishing the Troubled Asset Relief Program requires repaid funds to be used to pay down the federal budget deficit, and that the jobs bill would add to deficit.
The package includes $27.5 billion for highway construction and repair projects. The bill would also designate funding for infrastructure-related projects, including transportation, school construction, rehabilitating Amtrak trains and wastewater-treatment modernization.
Under the bill, $79 billion would be designated to help prop up safety-net programs, including a $41 billion, six-month extension of federal jobless benefits; a $12.3 billion extension of subsidies for individuals who lost health-care coverage when they were laid off; and $23.5 billion for the federal government to assume a larger portion of state governments’ Medicaid costs.
The plan doesn’t include several proposals by the Obama administration, including a hiring tax credit and rebates for homeowners to weatherize their houses
—Siobhan Hughes contributed to this article.
Write to Corey Boles at corey.boles@dowjones.com
