House to introduce second stimulus bill next month

By Lisa Lambert

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. state leaders, trade groups and economists descended on the House of Representatives on Wednesday to help work out a second economic stimulus bill that one influential Congressional member said would be introduced on November 17.

Representative Jim Oberstar, the Minnesota Democrat who chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, told a hearing on jump-starting the stalled economy that Congressional staff would be meeting throughout the month and a stimulus bill would be introduced when Congress reconvenes next month.

The House passed a sweeping $61 billion stimulus bill last month, but the package was blocked in the Senate and Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said the legislators would try again.

"We will not have any package at all unless the President agrees," Rep. Charles Rangel, the New York Democrat who heads the Ways and Means Committee that controls the federal purse strings, which also held a hearing on Monday.

President George W. Bush has signaled he may lower his resistance to a bill that would follow up on a stimulus bill passed this winter that gave businesses capital tax breaks and sent $600 checks to most Americans.

On Monday, legislators heard a wide range of suggestions to help the economy, from extending unemployment benefits to renovating buildings owned by the Smithsonian Institution. Much of the pressure was to aid states and cities, with governors and mayors asking the federal government to remember their needs.

"Unlike the federal government, local governments cannot carry a deficit from one year to the next...As a result, many cities are taking drastic steps to balance their budgets," Trenton Mayor Douglas Palmer told the Ways and Means Committee.

New Jersey Governor John Corzine asked Congress to pass a stimulus bill that would total $250 to $300 billion while testifying before the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, saying states may have to slash their budgets more than $100 billion in the next fiscal year without federal assistance. Infrastructure investments, such as road and bridge repairs, would especially aid states suffering from increasing unemployment, he said.

"New Jersey alone was to have $1.2 billion in additional construction projects ready to go within the next 90-120 days. The reality is we should be making these investments even if we weren't in a recession," he said.

Corzine, a former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs and U.S. Senator, said that his eastern state would bump up spending on infrastructure even without Congressional help.

"This is not about pork barrel funding. We're going to do this whether there is a stimulus package or not, we are so convinced that we can lean against the winds of unemployment in the real economy," he said, noting that the layoffs in investment banks were hitting his state hard.

Nearly half of last month's stalled stimulus bill targeted repairing highways and bridges, improving public transit, and investing in the train company Amtrak, airports, the clean water fund and the Army Corps of Engineers.

David Paterson, governor of New Jersey's neighbor New York, however, told the Ways and Means Committee that the first priority of a stimulus bill should be giving direct and immediate fiscal relief to states through emergency block grants and reimbursements for their portions of Medicaid, the joint healthcare program administered by the federal government and the states.

While Paterson said infrastructure spending was also key, he added the caveat that "state budget conditions have deteriorated to the point where any federal dollars received for infrastructure projects must be free from state matching fund requirements."

In contrast, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford begged the Ways and Means Committee not to pass a stimulus bill at all, saying the added debt would cause long-term damage to U.S. economy.