Adovcates say 80 million jobs at stake in transportation bill

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.