The Senate just passed their “extenders” bill, which included many expiring tax measures left over from 2009, along with a one-year extension of unemployment benefits and the COBRA subsidy, the doc fix, and dozens of other pieces, by a final count of 62-36. Earlier, the Senate got 66 votes on the same bill for cloture.

As I mentioned earlier today, the bill is problematic because it uses revenue offsets that also appear in the Obama health care proposal, draining that bill of revenue. House leaders have proposed a conference committee to iron out differences.

Meanwhile, continuing the “jobs agenda” approach, leading House Democrats will unveil a bill directed specifically at local governments.

House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.) will join other lawmakers and mayors to announce a $100 billion program to support jobs initiatives in local governments and municipalities.

“Our goal is to retain or create a million jobs,” Miller said during an appearance on CNBC Wednesday morning. “There’s some very serious concern that the small, good news we’re getting right now on the unemployment figures could be wiped out by what’s going to happen in local governments, if they don’t get some assistance.” [...]

The proposal Miller will unveil will be structured on the existing infrastructure of the community development bloc grant program. Mayors or local leaders will submit grant proposals in the program for funds to save or create local jobs, or to create work-training programs for city workers. The $100 billion allotted by the legislation would fund those local jobs programs.

Now this is more like it, although I don’t know what the chances for passage would be. Still, a second stimulus by inches, filled with worthwhile proposals like this, or the Rural Energy Savings Program just released by Sen. Jeff Merkley, which would give on-bill financing to rural electric co-op customers for energy retrofits, with payment coming out of the savings in their monthly energy bills, makes some sense. And yes this is still needed – growth on Wall Street has not translated to job growth, and until that time it’s very hard to call this a recovery. These are smart bills that ought to pass without delay.

I would remind everyone that nothing’s actually been signed into law yet on all these job agenda bills; at some point, the House and Senate need to come to a decision on passing something.