Adovcates say 80 million jobs at stake in transportation bill

By Keith Laing - 05/25/11 05:19 PM ET

The Transportation Construction Coalition is out with a new ad suggesting as many as 80 million jobs could hinge on Congress passing a new transportation bill this year.

Congress is gearing up to begin work on the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users, or SAFETEA-LU. A short-term version of the bill, which funds highways and public transportation, is in place until September.

The transportation coalition and other advocates want a longer six-year bill. The group said this week in a new ad that not doing so would cost America more than bumpy roads and bridges.

"The transportation infrastructure network is the backbone of our economy," the ad says. "Nearly 80 million American jobs in tourism, manufacturing, transportation and warehousing, agriculture and forestry, general construction, mining, retailing and wholesaling rely on highways, bridges and rail systems every day."

The figure counts not just construction jobs associated with building roads, but employees who would be unable to get to work with roads or public transportation. But it is still an eye-popping number, the TCC said in the advertisement

"That’s one big payroll," the ad. "These industries provide a total payroll of $2.8 trillion and their employees contribute more than $233 billion annually in state and federal payroll taxes. So it makes sense to get working on passage of the overdue highway/ transit investment bill. A lot of working Americans are depending on it."

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) said this week a first draft of the transportation bill could as early as this week.

The Obama administration has proposed spending $556 billion on the transportation bill, though Republicans in both chambers of the Congress have indicated they are unlikely to go along with that figure.

This post was corrected from an earlier version that attributed the ad solely to the American Road and Transporttion Builders Association on May 26 at 10:48 a.m.