Bush Signs Transit Bill, Puts Stress on New Jobs : Legislation: Remarks at Texas highway construction site reflect a new approach to economic issues.

With road-building equipment behind him and anxious hard hats in his audience, President Bush signed a $151-billion transportation bill Wednesday at a muddy highway construction site, declaring that its impact can be “summed up in three words: jobs, jobs, jobs.”

One day after the White House reluctantly acknowledged that the nation’s economy remains mired in recession, Bush traveled more than 1,000 miles--to an unfinished stretch of state highway 360 near the Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport--to sign the legislation on a wooden cable spool.

The measure will fund as many as 600,000 jobs in construction and other industries linked to transportation in the coming year, according to White House estimates. Over six years, it will provide $119.5 billion for highways and $31.5 billion for mass transit, a 40% increase in highway funding and a near doubling of transit expenditures.

It is intended to move the United States beyond the 35-year era in which the interstate highway system was built and its impact is likely to be felt throughout the nation: From the commuter or trucker whose daily drives would be eased by new or expanded highways, to city dwellers taking advantage of subsidized subway fares and wider service, to pedestrians and bicyclers using new pathways built with federal assistance.

Its goal, Bush later told transportation officials, is to “lay the foundation for the most significant revolution in American transportation history.”

But the potential political impact was not lost on the White House or the chilled crowd at the job site. A road sign bore the greeting: “Moving America in 1992. Pres. Bush.”

The measure, Bush said, “will enable us to build and repair roads, fix bridges and improve mass transit--keeps Americans on the move and help the economy in the process. But really, it is summed up by three words--jobs, jobs, jobs. And that’s the priority.”

“Yes, these are tough times and, yes, there are layoffs and many families are having a rough go of it,” Bush said. “And the American people want action. And action is what they’ll get.” His remarks reflect the new approach the White House has taken to try to counter repeated doses of bad news from economists and poll-takers by promising to aggressively tackle the nation’s economic problems.

“I want every American to know that getting the economy back on track is my No. 1 priority,” said the President, who three times during his public appearances Wednesday used the phrase “jobs, jobs, jobs.”

The decision to sign the measure in Texas, rather than at the White House, placed the President among blue-collar workers--as his visit to a Chicago hamburger joint did a week ago--in an effort by the White House staff to portray him as sympathetic to the economic problems of average Americans.

After the signing ceremony in a drizzle on the highway still under construction, Bush--wearing a navy blue raincoat--donned a white hard hat. Then he spent 15 minutes in the rain looking at earth-moving equipment and other massive road-building gear, escorted by workers along a muddy boardwalk.

After the inspection, Bush and seven construction workers--three of whom rode in his limousine--lunched on chicken-fried steak, gravy and mashed potatoes at Cafe 121 (“Burgers, Fries, Drinks, Pies,” its sign read) in the town of Coppell, 10 minutes away.

Bush pulled out a roll of bills and paid the $48.10 tab. He had carried his lunch in a small cooler off Air Force One when he arrived in Texas, anticipating that he would eat with workers at the job site. But the rain changed those plans.

Reporters seated at a nearby table in Cafe 121 heard Bush talking with the workers about the Houston Oilers, quail hunting and bass fishing--but not about the economy. The White House has said such excursions are intended to give him a sense of what working Americans are thinking about.

Later, Will Woodward, one of Bush’s guests, said that, if the President had asked him, he would have told Bush: “There are a lot of people looking for jobs.”

Asked by a reporter whether he would pick up the tab, Bush cracked that he would have to see whether he could afford it “in these times of austerity.”

He fished in his pocket, pulled out a roll of $20 bills, and said: “I’m loaded!”

The new White House chief of staff, Samuel K. Skinner, the former secretary of transportation, meanwhile, ignored Bush’s approach that the measure was a bipartisan effort. Sitting down next to another diner, Bob Anderson, who owns a small trucking business, Skinner touted the job-creating aspects of the legislation, and said: “George Bush is responsible for this bill.”

Actually, the bill was hammered out in arduous congressional conferences among Democrats and Republicans, and its funding was increased 50% beyond the amount that Bush recommended.

In remarks at the construction site and in a speech later to the American Assn. of State Highway and Transportation Officials at the Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport, Bush stressed the ripple effect of the new law as its impact is felt throughout the economy.

When the measure was unveiled last Feb. 13, it was touted by the Administration not as a jobs bill, but as a transit measure. At that time, it was a $105-billion, five-year program billed as a centerpiece of Bush’s domestic program not for its impact on employment, but for its spending on highways, mass transit and transportation safety initiatives.

Bush said that the measure will bring $11 billion in federal funds into the economy immediately.

The reach of the bill is expected to extend well beyond the biggest winner, the highway construction industry. Also in line to receive the government money are high-tech companies involved in designing and building innovative electronics to control traffic flow, providers of mass transit services and manufacturers of air bags--the measure requires the installation of dual-side air bags for driver and front-seat passenger in all vehicles sold in the United States by 1999.

But it is the hard-hat workers--typified by Arnold Martinez, a bridge construction worker chosen by the White House to introduce Bush at the job site--who White House officials believe stand to gain immediate benefit.

Blue-collar support, once a reliable building block in the Democratic coalition, proved crucial to Bush in 1988 and to Ronald Reagan in the two preceding elections.

Martinez, in blue jeans and yellow hard hat, reminded Bush of the precariousness of the economy. He said that after five years as a construction worker, he knows jobs have beginnings and endings and that “the ends are sometimes scary” because of uncertainty about the future.

Indeed, as soon as federal aid to states and highways ended at the end of the last fiscal year, on Sept. 30, layoffs in the highway construction industry began, with thousands of workers affected.

Over the next six years, California will receive at least $10.5 billion in highway funds, the highest figure for any state, and much of the money can be spent on mass transit projects. The bill specifically earmarks $1.3 billion for extension of the Bay Area Rapid Transit System in Northern California and the Metro Rail system in Los Angeles.

Among its other provisions, the bill will:

--Provide states with $6 billion intended to ease congestion and help them meet the air quality standards of the 1990 clean air law.

--Fund a $725-million project to develop high-speed trains that would ride on magnetic cushions, rather than steel wheels.

--Spend $660 million on a project to work on equipping highways and cars with computers, to help monitor traffic flows and avoid congestion.