WASHINGTON (PAI)–By a 65-31 vote, the Senate decided on Feb 4 to keep a strong “Buy American” provision in the ever-growing American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, otherwise known as the stimulus bill. But senators modified the item.

The vote defeated a move by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., last year’s GOP presidential nominee, to strip the Buy American plan from the now-$900 billion measure. The Senate’s “Buy American” language covers all the spending in the stimulus bill, but said the Buy American provision should be “consistent with U.S. obligations under international agreements.”

The House let agencies using steel, concrete and other materials on stimulus-paid construction projects to buy materials abroad only if they could not find enough at home. With U.S. steel plants at 45% capacity, foreign purchases were unlikely.

The vote – and the modification – came after Europe and Canada objected to it as a violation of international trade and government procurement rules the U.S. agreed to in the treaty creating the World Trade Organization. And President Barack Obama (D), in a news clip aired on public broadcasting stations, seemed dubious about “Buy America” with no exceptions. “It’s something we need to look at,” he said.

That prompted AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka, on the same program, to tell PBS that the Buy America provision just reiterates a point that has been part of government policy since 1933 – and that it protects U.S. workers and other nations which have even stronger buy-from-their-own-companies provisions.

Added David Foster, a former Steelworkers vice president and now director of the BlueGreen Alliance of unions and environmental groups: “It’s taking American taxpayer dollars and using them to put American taxpayers back to work.”

But whether the entire stimulus bill, which includes $148 billion for “shovel-ready” construction projects and billions more for energy efficiency programs which could create jobs for Electrical Workers, Steelworkers, building trades workers and even teachers, survives is another matter. Senate Republican leaders are – again – threatening a filibuster and need only 41 votes to talk the bill to death.

Steelworkers President Leo Gerard’s response, voiced at the Good Jobs Green Jobs conference this week in Washington: “If they want to filibuster it, I say bring out the cots” into Senate corridors for a round-the-clock talkathon. “Let them stand up against reviving the American economy.”