WASHINGTON (PAI) – The $790 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, known as the stimulus bill, contains something for just about everyone as it tries to help pull the economy out of the deepest crash in at least 24 years. But analysis also shows that not everything everyone – including in the labor movement – wanted is in it.

The measure is one-third tax cuts and two-thirds spending. The whole point, President Obama says, is to create or maintain between 3.5 million and 4 million jobs which would otherwise go down the drain, adding to the nation’s 11.62-million-person jobless rolls and 7.6% unemployment rate.

Obama made those same points on Feb. 12 to a crowd of Auto Workers at the Caterpillar plant in Peoria, Ill. And when he finished, the head of the still-profitable firm – which raised its profit margins in past years by imposing a two-tier contract on UAW, among other moves – said he supports the stimulus, but did not promise to rehire any of the 20,000 workers worldwide Cat plans to lay off.

Details of the bill include:

• About $50 billion for construction of roads, airports, bridges and other projects nationwide. Construction unions estimate each $1 billion in construction spending creates between 22,000 and 47,000 jobs, depending on the type of project. The unions welcomed the spending, but some leaders – including Steel Workers President Leo Gerard and Laborers President Terry O’Sullivan – lobbied for more. Of that infrastructure spending, about four-fifths will go for the immediate projects, while the rest (about $11 billion) is a down payment on upgrading the nation’s electricity grid.
• $54 billion earmarked for state budgets. AFSCME lobbied for even more. The money will preserve social services for the jobless, go for highway and school building and to limit layoffs of teachers, fire fighters and others. There’s also $87 billion to states to help pay for Medicaid. States face huge deficits, led by California’s $42 billion. The smaller federal figure means fewer people will avoid layoffs, especially since – at the insistence of key swing vote Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine – part of the states’ funds would go not to such people programs but to possible energy retrofitting of schools. American Federation of Teachers official Nancy Van Meter said “the stimulus money for education was cut in half and the school construction money was zeroed out” by the Senate. Negotiators restored part of the funds, and included the school construction money, which would also help employ building trades workers, in the state aid.
• The bill also contains $15.6 billion to increase maximum Pell grants to help students afford college, an Obama goal.
• Retention of the Senate’s modified “Buy American” provision, saying all projects in the bill, not just the infrastructure projects, should use U.S.-made materials, as long as those purchases are made “in a fashion consistent with worldwide trade rules and obligations” for government procurement. The Steelworkers and the Congressional Steel Caucus pushed the Buy America plan, saying it continued 75-year-old policies.
• The European Union still rails against “Buy America” as too protectionist, prompting AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka to point out the EU has more-restrictive government procurement rules, banning competition against national industries in drinking water, telecommunications, energy and transportation.
• Extended unemployment benefits and a subsidy to help jobless workers pay COBRA premiums to their former employers in order to keep health insurance. But the amount for the COBRA premium subsidies was cut down, thus lessening how many weeks each jobless worker could get federal funds to help pay for health care.
• There’s also a $20 billion increase for food stamp spending.
• $1 billion for a “near-zero emissions power plants” to encourage energy efficiency and reduce emissions of carbon into the atmosphere.
• A tax deduction for new car purchases, inserted by Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., and designed to help sales as the three U.S.-based car companies hit the financial rocks, was severely cut.