By a vote of 217-212 the House last week passed H.R. 2847, "Jobs for Main Street Act of 2010," legislation intended to stimulate job growth. Included in the bill are funds for various infrastructure investments.
Funding includes:
- $27.5 billion for highways (freight and passenger rail and port projects also eligible);
- $8.4 billion for transit;
- $500 million for Airport Improvement Program grants;
- $800 million for Amtrak fleet modernization;
- $1 billion for clean water state revolving funds;
- $1 billion for drinking water grants;
- $2 billion for school and public housing rehabilitation;
- $715 million for navigation and flood control projects by the Army Corps of Engineers; and
- $100 million in water supply projects by the Bureau of Reclamation.
The highway funds will be distributed to states by the same formula that was used to distribute stimulus funds previously provided in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). States are not required to provide any matching dollars to be eligible to receive the highway funds. States would be required to have fifty percent of the funds under contract within 90 days or lose the remaining funds (to be redistributed to states that have met this requirement). The second fifty percent must be under contract within one year or be lost to other successful states. This is a far more stringent requirement than ARRA, which required funds to be "obligated" rather than under contract. These funds are provided on top of funding that comes through the traditional program. Additional Buy American requirements would be applied to highway and transit projects.
Projects funded with the clean water and drinking water grants must be under contract in eight months. All of the infrastructure spending is subject to the same Buy American requirements included in the ARRA, which AGC opposed, as well as other reporting requirements.
Although this bill is not expected to be taken up in the Senate until after the first of the year, AGC will continue to press for additional investments in infrastructure during the 111
th Congress.
For more information, contact Marco Giamberardino at (703) 837-5325 or giamberm@agc.org.