Democrats Get Down To Brass Tacks On Jobs Bill

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL)
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A forthcoming Senate jobs bill will likely focus on four main sources of growth, according to a Senate leadership aide: Small business job creation, infrastructure jobs, green jobs, and public sector jobs.

As I noted earlier this week, Senate Democrats have made, and continue to make progress on a jobs package–likely to be their top legislative priority once health care reform is completely off their plate–and they’ve begun to winnow down a wide range of options into a package they could potentially expedite through the Senate.

Back in late summer, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tasked his deputy, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Sen. Byron Dorgan with putting together a bill meant to address rising unemployment.

“Reid and Durbin were taking the longview, looking at a number of months of pretty dismal job news,” the aide said. “They started taking a look at job numbers, anticipating that job numbers wouldn’t be getting a whole lot better.”

In the months since then, Durbin and Dorgan have hosted about 10 meetings with members from across the Democratic spectrum.

“Any member of the caucus was invited, and everyone was asked to bring a series of policy ideas,” the aide said. “Nothing was considered too crazy.”

At least 40 members of the caucus attended at least one of these meetings. We collected 121 policy ideas, and since about December–beginning of December–we’ve really started focusing on winnowing that list down to something more manageable–stuff that really gives us the most bang for the buck.

The work continues, but leadership believes it has the basis for a package.

“We’ve identified four main areas: small-business job creation, infrastructure jobs, green jobs, and public sector jobs, the last of which is more of going to be a job-preservation–giving aid to states to retain teachers and firefighters,” the aide said. “Small business, infrastructure, green areas are where we think we can really create some jobs.”

Soon after the Senate return, leadership hopes to present members with an ideas package, outlining what they hope the yet-to-be written legislative package will look like. Yet to be decided, though, is whether the bill will have to pass through all the slow-moving channels of the Senate, or whether leadership will leapfrog most of them.

“Whether this goes through the normal committee process, or whether we…do this all on the floor is the big question,” said the aide.

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