1 week Ago
WASHINGTON — Congressional leaders announced an agreement Sunday on a short-term spending bill that will fund federal agencies for about three months, averting a possible partial government shutdown when the new budget year begins Oct. 1 and pushing final decisions until after the November election. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La.
, walks to a meeting at the Capitol on Sept. 11 in Washington. Temporary spending bills generally fund agencies at current levels, but an additional $231 million was included to bolster the Secret Service after the two assassination attempts against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, and additional money was added to aid with the presidential transition, among other things.
Lawmakers have struggled to get to this point as the current budget year winds to a close at month's end. At the urging of the most conservative members of his conference, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., had linked temporary funding with a mandate that would have compelled states to require proof of citizenship when people register to vote.
But Johnson abandoned that approach to reach an agreement, even as Trump insisted there should not be a stop-gap measure without the voting requirement. Bipartisan negotiations began in earnest shortly after that, with leadership agreeing to extend funding into mid-December. That gives the current Congress the ability to fashion a full-year spending bill after the Nov.
5 election, rather than push that responsibility to the next Congress and president. In a letter to Republican colleagues, Johnson said the budget measure would be “very narrow, bare-bones" and include "only the extensions that are absolutely necessary.” “While this is not the solution any of us prefer, it is the most prudent path forward under the present circumstances," Johnson wrote.
"As history has taught and current polling affirms, shutting the government down less than 40 days from a fateful election would be an act of political malpractice.” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said Democrats would evaluate the bill in its entirety before this week's vote, but with the agreement, “Congress is now on a bipartisan path to avoid a government shutdown that would hurt everyday Americans.” Rep.
Tom Cole, the House Appropriations Committee chairman, had said on Friday that talks were going well. “So far, nothing has come up that we can't deal with," said Cole, R-Okla. “Most people don't want a government shutdown and they don't want that to interfere with the election.
So nobody is like, ‘I’ve got to have this or we're walking.' It's just not that way.” Johnson's earlier effort had no chance in the Democratic-controlled Senate and was opposed by the White House, but it did give the speaker a chance to show Trump and conservatives within his conference that he fought for their request.
The final result — government funding effectively on autopilot — was what many had predicted. With the election just weeks away, few lawmakers in either party had any appetite for the brinksmanship that often leads to a shutdown. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the same agreement could have been reached two weeks ago, but “Speaker Johnson chose to follow the MAGA way and wasted precious time.
” "As I have said throughout this process, there is only one way to get things done, with bipartisan, bicameral support,” Schumer said. Now a bipartisan majority is expected to push the short-term measure over the finish line this week. The agreement on the short-term measure does not mean getting to a final spending bill will be easy in December.
The election results could also influence the political calculations if one party fares much better than the other, potentially pushing the fight into early next year. The Secret Service funding also comes with a string attached, with lawmakers making it contingent on the Department of Homeland Security providing certain information to a House task force and Senate committee investigating the assassination attempts made against Trump. In a recent letter, the Secret Service told lawmakers that a funding shortfall was not the reason for lapses in Trump’s security when a gunman climbed onto an unsecured roof on July 13 at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and opened fire.
But acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe Jr. said this week that the agency had “immediate needs” and that he’s talking to Congress. Photo Credit: Syda Productions / Shutterstock In recent years, financial commitment from the federal government to rebuild and expand critical American infrastructure has been a boon for the construction industry.
Stemming from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, CHIPS and Science Act, and Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, federal funding announcements for infrastructure projects have totalled $552.8 billion as of June 2024. From building and expanding critical railroad corridors to securing clean water and broadband internet in rural communities, the American construction industry has its work cut out for it.
Despite these sizable financial commitments, the construction industry faces a major labor shortage . Largely due to the aforementioned infrastructure developments combined with recent large private sector construction projects, Associated Builders and Contractors—a construction industry trade association—estimates the sector needs to hire over 500,000 workers to satisfy current demand in 2024. Construction employment has not kept pace with increasing construction spending Source: Construction Coverage analysis of U.
S. Census Bureau and U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics data | Image Credit: Construction Coverage Construction employment recovered after a brief but steep round of layoffs during COVID. However, hiring in the sector has plateaued while construction spending has continued to grow. Since February 2020, construction employment has increased by only 2.
8%, while the annual rate of construction spending has risen by 44.4%. While the construction labor shortage has been exacerbated by present economic factors, it is a longer-term issue resulting from a decades-long decline in trade education, an aging workforce, and an inability to attract younger workers.
Tennessee and parts of the Mountain West are experiencing a hiring boom in construction Source: Construction Coverage analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data | Image Credit: Construction Coverage Despite short- and long-term labor shortages at the national level, some states have seen substantial growth in construction hiring.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded a 27.7% increase in construction employment in Tennessee from 2018 to 2023, leading the nation. The Mountain West has also seen substantial increases with Idaho (+26.
8%), Arizona (+25.7%), Utah (+21.5%), Nevada (+18.
6%), and Montana (+17.5%) all ranking in the top 10. Many of these construction job gains can be attributed to population growth and demand for more residential housing in these areas.
Local construction job growth strongly correlates with overall employment growth Source: Construction Coverage analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data | Image Credit: Construction Coverage At the metropolitan level, there is a strong positive correlation between the overall health of the local economy and construction-specific job growth.
In general, locations with the most total employment growth were more likely to have strong construction job growth, while metros suffering from job losses were more likely to cut back on construction hiring. These trends highlight the fact that job growth tends to reinforce itself. When a city adds more workers in one part of the economy, it often needs to create more homes, office space, and services to accommodate them, which helps create more jobs in other parts of the economy as well.
In many of these high-growth cities, construction job growth significantly outpaced total employment growth over the past five years. Below is a breakdown of construction job growth for the top and bottom metropolitan areas and states. The analysis was conducted by Construction Coverage , a website that provides construction insurance guides, using data from the U.
S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. For more information and complete results, see the original post— Cities With the Biggest Increase in Construction Jobs —on Construction Coverage.
Photo Credit: Syda Productions / Shutterstock The data used in this analysis is from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics .
To determine the locations with the biggest increase in construction jobs, researchers at Construction Coverage calculated the percentage change in construction employment between 2018 and 2023. Only changes which were statistically significant at a 90% confidence interval were reported. Researchers also calculated the percentage change in total employment, total change in construction employment, and the median annual wage for construction workers in 2023.
To improve relevance, metropolitan areas were grouped into cohorts based on population size: small (less than 350,000), midsize (350,000-999,999), and large (1,000,000 or more). For complete results, see Cities With the Biggest Increase in Construction Jobs on Construction Coverage. Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter.
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