The Biden administration’s legislative ideas are coming into sharper focus, starting with a $1.9-trillion coronavirus “rescue” plan that includes only a small list of construction-related provisions. But what has captured construction executives’ interest is the second item on incoming President Joe Biden’s Capitol Hill agenda: an economic recovery proposal due in February that Biden says will “make historic investments in infrastructure, along with manufacturing, research and development and clean energy.”

行业官员说，新政府还将在环境与劳资关系等领域寻求其他立法，并修改监管政策。

Once the recovery plan is fleshed out in legislative text, it still must win approval on Capitol Hill. Biden’s proposals face a somewhat smoother path there than Democrats feared a few months ago, thanks to wins in Jan. 5 runoffs in two U.S. Senate races in Georgia. The victories resulted in a 50-50 party split in the chamber, where new Vice-President Kamala Harris will hold the tie-breaking vote.

在某些情况下，它还使民主党人绕过60票的阈值，以使用预算和解来结束for缩，这使得法案只能以简单的多数派进行。众议院仍然掌握在民主党人的手中，但利润率仅为11票。

A Senate controlled by Democrats means “change in chairmanships, change in staff and change in priorities,” says Michele Stanley, National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association vice president for government and regulatory affairs. Democrats’ slim Senate majority “means these priorities will not be accomplished without a lot of consensus,” Stanley adds.

Steve Hall, American Council of Engineering Companies’ senior vice president for advocacy, says Democrats’ Senate edge “allows [Biden] I think to be a bit more aggressive and to shape the start of the conversation—in terms of the legislative agenda—more to his liking.” But Hall says, “The president is going to need Republicans on his side to move the big stuff forward that becomes law.”

A Key Deadline

建筑官员说，他们希望2021年最终成为国会批准“大型东西”中最大的一年，这是一项长期的基础设施法案，并在政治上尽可能多地资金。

Biden whetted industry appetites in his Jan. 14 rollout of the rescue plan, saying he would present his “Build Back Better recovery plan” before a joint session of Congress in February. Biden said, “It’s time to stop talking about infrastructure and to finally start building an infrastructure so we can be more competitive.”

他说，他的提议将产生“数百万的高薪工作，使美国人可以重建我们的道路，我们的桥梁，我们的港口，以使它们更具气候弹性，并使它们更快，更便宜，更清洁以运输美国制造的商品在我们国家和世界各地。”

Biden did not provide a price tag for the infrastructure plan, but during the presidential campaign he floated a $2-trillion proposal. Still unknown is how such a proposal would be paid for and how broad its scope will be.

Infrastructure advocates expect the plan’s centerpiece to be a multiyear surface transportation reauthorization. Hall says, “We know that’s going to be the driver.” Highway and transit programs now are operating under a one-year stopgap, which lapses Sept. 30. Hall says that deadline will force legislative action. “It’s got to happen,” he says. “There’s an end date at the end of September.”

Democrats’ Senate control and Biden’s clean energy and other climate-related priorities already are shaping the content and contours of the highway part of the package. The new chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Tom Carper (D-Del.), has signaled he won’t use a $287-billion measure the panel cleared last Congress as a starting point. That bill never advanced to the chamber’s floor.

一位发言人说，在起草新的高速公路法案时，卡珀现在希望大大扩展早期版本的规定，以涉及气候变化。他说，Carper的目标是遵循Biden的框架，其中包括移动运输部门的碳排放量。

国家沥青路面协会主席兼首席执行官奥黛丽·科普兰（Audrey Copeland）表示，拜登的计划将超越高速公路和过境。她说：“我认为这肯定会更广泛。”

全国清洁水机构协会（NACWA）还预计，拜登的计划将会广泛。政府事务董事总经理克里斯蒂娜·苏菲斯（Kristina Surfus）表示，NACWA的一个主要目标是使水成为包装中的“前部和中心”。她补充说：“对水的投资与相关的民主优先事项紧密一致，以建立弹性和推动环境正义。”

拜登也可能会推动其他立法。例如，建筑工会乐观地认为，一个关键优先事项，保护组织或专业的权利可能会在民主党多数派的国会中取得进展。该法案将对劳动力进行全面的改变，例如结束对二次抵制的禁令。众议院在2020年通过了专业法案，但参议院没有接受。

Yvette Pena-O’Sullivan, executive director of the Laborers’ International Union of North America , says, “there’s a lot of hope for figuring out a way to move the PRO Act or something like it, so it’s not just a symbolic bill that’s sitting out there,” She adds that “we will see how well the discussions go. It may not look exactly like the PRO Act, but there’s real opportunity to get labor reform done.”

But the bill will face strong opposition from Associated Builders and Contractors and other business groups.

Rescue plan

Biden’s initial legislative priority, however, is his $1.9-trillion “American Rescue Plan.” It seeks to address immediate problems stemming from the persistent coronavirus pandemic. The envisioned legislation would fund activities such as a stepped-up vaccination push, further payments to individuals, extended and increased unemployment benefits, expanded paid family leave, and major funding infusions to state and local governments and schools.

救援计划唯一与建筑有关的直接资金是其K-12学校的1300亿美元。这可以用于各种目的，包括对学校设施的身体改进，例如升级通风系统和修改室内空间以允许社会疏远。但是学校还可以选择使用这些资金来雇用更多的看门人或辅导员，购买个人防护设备或扩展校车服务。

Other provisions could have indirect benefits for construction. The plan’s $350 billion for state and local governments would keep key public personnel on the job, such as police officers and firefighters. But using the money to shore up state and local agencies’ operating budgets could avoid delaying construction projects.

On the regulatory front, the Biden administration is expected to try to undo what critics call the Trump administration’s rollbacks.

Within his first days of office, Biden plans to direct agencies to delay any rules that have not gone into effect, including “midnight rules” President Donald Trump issued in his last days in office. These are likely to include rules to weaken protections for migratory birds and to change the metric for determining “significant” sources of pollution under the Clean Air Act. Biden also can issue executive orders reversing policies Trump put in place through such directives.

Environmental groups also expect the Biden administration to use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to shift environmental policy in their favor. Under that law, Congress can disapprove rules issued within 60 legislative days of an administration’s end. That covers rules finalized after Aug. 21. One possible Biden target for CRA action is blocking a less-stringent rule on methane emissions. Dan Lashoff, World Resources Institute director, calls repealing that rule a “no brainer.”

But many Trump regulations that affect construction came before the CRA cutoff. “The closer it gets to getting a rule into place, the more limited their options are,” says Melinda Tomaino, Associated General Contractors of America director of environmental services.

Some Trump rules, such as his replacement for the Waters of the United States regulation and revisions to the National Environmental Policy Act, are already being challenged in federal courts. Tomaino says Biden’s administration isn’t likely to continue Trump’s defense of those rules if cases reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

The new administration also can put its stamp on policy through actions that do not involve the lengthy rulemaking process, says Brad Thompson, managing director for strategic initiatives at C2ES, a climate and energy think tank. He says the US Dept. of Energy, for example, could release new energy-efficiency standards.

Thompson also expects the White House Council on Environmental Quality to revisit NEPA changes issued in July, to again place an emphasis on a project’s “cumulative impacts.”

Biden’s stated commitment to addressing social justice inequities will affect pollution regulations, Tomaino says. For example, the US Environmental Protection Agency has been working on a plan to deal with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. She says she expects the PFAS focus to “go into overdrive with the new administration.”

与劳动有关的法规的变化也可能发生。铁工工会总裁埃里克·迪恩（Eric Dean）表示，他希望更多的美国劳工部领导层来解决与COVID相关的问题，例如安全和健康方案。

“We want them to give us a blueprint for how to navigate something we’ve never dealt with before,” Dean says. “We thought government should provide the leadership.” Under the Trump administration, “all we got were crickets,” he says.

According to Biden’s transition team, his rescue plan would authorize the Labor Dept.’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration to issue a COVID-19 protection standard for workers, presumably including those in construction.

有组织的工党，尤其是工人联盟，正在为拜登的决定加油，提名波士顿市长马丁·沃尔什（Martin J.佩纳·奥沙利文（Pena-o’sullivan）表示，工会还希望看到更多地执行劳动法和法规，包括那些处理工资，独立承包商问题和安全性的法规。

Dramatic shifts could come at the National Labor Relations Board. Wilma Liebman, a Democrat who chaired it during the Obama administration, says that under the Trump administration, the board has been staggering in its sweep and its speed in … how many precedents that have been overruled, both by way of adjudication and rulemaking, possibly more than any other in history.” Those changes have favored employers, she says, and drew praise from business groups.

The five-person NLRB now has a 3-1 Republican majority. It has one vacant Democratic seat. A Republican seat will open up in August, at which point Democrats are expected to take the majority.

The ironworkers’ Dean also hopes the new Congress will reach a deal on an approach to help financially ailing multi-employer pension plans; the plans are common in union construction.