WASHINGTON (PAI) - Armed with arguments showing construction projects 
immediately put people to work, 2,578 delegates from the nation's building trades unions headed for Capitol Hill April 7-9 to lobby for federal funds to start putting shovels in the ground.

But the delegates to the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department legislative conference had a second goal: To preserve the Davis-Bacon Act, which ensures prevailing - not cut-rate - wages on the federally funded construction contracts.

The demand for the construction projects and for Davis-Bacon drew support from politicians across the bipartisan spectrum.

Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.), the House Infrastructure Committee's top Democrat, said measures approving more than $500 billion in construction of highways, railroads, airports, schools, and water and sewer plants over the next five years are stalled because GOP leaders won't let lawmakers vote on them.

That's because his committee inserted pro-Davis-Bacon provisions - and "GOP 
leaders hate Davis-Bacon," he said. But Oberstar won't let the panel send the measures out for a full House floor vote without it, he pledged.

Rep. Jack Quinn (R-N.Y.) told the delegates that 36 moderate Republicans are demanding their leaders allow votes on construction spending measures - with Davis-Bacon included.

"If we get an up-or-down vote, we win," because Davis-Bacon construction 
jobs "get done on time and under budget," he said. Signers of Quinn's letter include two House committee chairmen: Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle (R-Iowa) and Science Committee Chairman Sherwood L. Boehlert (R-N.Y.)

"While a majority of Republicans may oppose" Davis-Bacon, "we feel equally as strong that Davis-Bacon is important to the country's construction workers, union or non-union, whose standard of living is often predicated on this law," the lawmakers' letter warned their leaders.

And Quinn and his colleagues also chided the GOP leadership for refusing to hold votes last year on big construction-related bills because of the Davis-Bacon controversy.