Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Ford Motor Co. and Centex Corp., the second-largest U.S. homebuilder by sales, would be among the biggest winners under the $838 billion stimulus measure the U.S. Senate passed today.

The Senate is more generous to automakers and homebuilders than the House was in the $819 billion measure it approved last month. Alternative-energy companies and regional builders such as Sundt Construction Inc. in Tempe, Arizona, fare less well under the Senate bill.

President Barack Obama, who has said he wants stimulus legislation on his desk by the weekend, is counting on the plan to help revive an economy that has lost 3.6 million jobs since December 2007, sending the unemployment rate to the highest level since 1992. The plan would trigger the biggest burst of public works spending since the interstate highway system was started in the 1950s.

Where the money goes will help shape the fortunes of companies and communities, said Rogan Kersh, associate dean of New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service.

“In a bill this big, there are countless private-sector winners and losers,” Kersh said.

The Senate passed the measure on a vote of 61 to 37, with three Republicans siding with Democrats. Now, the two chambers must work out their differences.

Auto Deductions

Ford, General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC, along with overseas-based rivals that produce vehicles in the U.S., would benefit from an $11 billion provision in the Senate bill that would let car buyers deduct interest on auto loans and local sales taxes from their income taxes.

“Tax deductions on auto loans are very beneficial to a customer,” Mark Fields, Ford’s North American chief, told reporters Feb. 4. “On a $25,000 car, that can save you $1,500 to $1,600.”

U.S. auto sales fell 37 percent in January, the worst sales month since 1981. GM and Chrysler have received government aid to try to stave off bankruptcy.

“We really need consumers to just walk in the door” of dealerships, said Wade Newton, spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a Washington trade group for 11 automakers that backed the provision. “This is a crisis of consumer confidence.”

Centex,D.R. Horton Inc., and other U.S. homebuilders might see sales increase as consumers used a planned tax credit of $15,000, or 10 percent of the purchase price, whichever is less, under the Senate legislation.

All Homebuyers

“If someone’s going to give you $15,000 in free money it has to be stimulative,” said Eric Landry, an analyst at Morningstar in Chicago. “If nothing is done, we’re looking at another year of significantly lower starts.”

The new credit doesn’t have to be repaid, and all homebuyers are eligible. It would replace a $7,500 tax credit for first-time buyers, passed last year, that had to be repaid over 15 years.

“We’re pretty happy with the way the Senate bill is shaping up,” said Jerry Howard, president and chief executive officer of the National Association of Home Builders. “We think it will entice a lot of those people sitting on the sidelines into the marketplace.”

Howard said the group is “going to throw the kitchen sink” at the House to keep the provision in the final stimulus bill.

Companies anticipating a boost from public-school construction funded by the House bill would be disappointed if the Senate measure prevails. It eliminates almost all of the $20 billion the House allotted for that purpose.

School Construction

“It’s penny-wise and pound-foolish,” Doug Pruitt, chief executive officer of closely held Sundt Construction, said of the Senate cuts. “They’re not thinking about the future.”

Sundt gets as much as 20 percent of its revenue from school construction, Pruitt said in an interview. “There are a lot of those projects that are ready to go right now,” he said.

The school-construction money was removed from the Senate bill because some lawmakers thought the funding should be taken up as part of the regular budget process, Senator Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, said in an interview yesterday. She said she will vote against the stimulus bill today.

“Construction jobs are the clearest short-term stimulus you can produce because it is an immediate job for people within the construction industry who right now are facing steep unemployment,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.

Wind, Solar Power

“The notion that this was waste, not stimulative, doesn’t make any sense to this 11th grade Social Studies teacher,” she said.

Companies that make wind turbines, solar panels or advanced lighting are hoping for final passage of the House measure, while those that want to make electric cars or build clean coal or nuclear plants prefer the Senate bill.

“One of the things that happened is the House version had more robust spending for green energy and the Senate version has gotten caught up in political give-and-take,” said Rick Gittleman, who heads up the renewable energy practice at the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer and Feld LLP.

The differences may have alternative-energy companies such as Vestas Wind Systems A/S, SunPower Corp., and the Osram Sylvania unit of Siemens AG fighting General Motors and Southern Co., the largest U.S. electricity generator, for language favorable to their interests.

Renewable Energy

The House bill includes grants from the Energy Department for sponsors of renewable energy projects equaling 30 percent of costs. Existing tax breaks pay out only after a project is financed.

Without the Energy Department aid, solar and wind companies will cut workers and take their operations overseas, said Gregory Whetstone, a lobbyist for the American Wind Energy Association.

“We are very worried about what would happen without that Energy Department program,” he said.

The Senate bill would include tax breaks for buyers of plug-in hybrid vehicles, and a manufacturers’ tax break to help offset the cost of building them. The Senate bill also includes $50 billion in loan guarantees that can be used for nuclear power plants. The House measure has no such provisions.

Health Institutes

The Senate version of the bill gives a $10 billion boost to the National Institutes of Health, a collection of 27 research institutes and centers, compared with $3.5 billion provided by the House.

“The number is in play, but it’s so popular that it bodes well for a good number, if not the full $10 billion,” said Kim Monk, a managing director at Capital Alpha Partners LLC, a Washington-based research firm for institutional investors.

Equipment makers stand to benefit from “a bump in NIH money,” according to a research note last week from Stanford Group Co. in Washington. Among those, according to Stanford Group, are Becton, Dickinson & Co., Illumina Inc., Life Technologies Corp., Millipore Corp., PerkinElmer Inc., Sigma- Aldrich Corp., Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., and Waters Corp.

Transportation infrastructure spending was largely spared when the Senate pared its package. Highways and bridges would get $30 billion in the House bill and $27.1 billion in the Senate version.

Cement Demand

“While the pace at which the new spending is put in place matters considerably, it is clear that the stimulus will have a significantly positive impact on cement demand,” Hector Medina, vice president for finance and planning of Cemex SAB, the largest cement producer in the U.S., said in a presentation to analysts on Feb. 4.

“There’s a growing recognition that direct spending on infrastructure is one of the best ways to put people to work,” Medina said.

Agco Corp. Chief Executive Officer Martin Richenhagen, who heads the Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based Association of Equipment Manufacturers, said he doesn’t want to quibble about the distinction between House and Senate versions of the bill. Agco is the second largest U.S. maker of farm equipment, after Deere & Co.

“This is only about who is spending the money,” Richenhagen said of the Senate version. “I just hope Congress gets their act together fast.”

-- With Tina Seeley, Aliza Marcus and John Hughes in Washington, Brian Louis and Melita Garza in Chicago, Keith Naughton in Detroit, Vivek Shankar in San Francisco and Thomas Black in Monterrey, Mexico. Editors: Joe Winski, Larry Liebert

To contact the reporters on this story: Angela Greiling Keane in Washington at agreilingkea@bloomberg.net; Daniel Whitten in Washington at dwhitten2@bloomberg.net; Jonathan D. Salant in Washington at jsalant@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: February 10, 2009 13:40 EST