WASHINGTON — Call it a jobs bill, or call it the “son of stimulus,” but a bill aiming to take a bite out of the country’s nearly 10 percent unemployment rate will be the first order of business when the U.S. Senate returns to work next week.

In Oregon, the employment situation is even worse, with more than 20 percent of people underemployed — meaning they have less work than they want, but may have stopped looking for a job. The state doesn’t keep underemployment stats for local communities, but the unemployment rate for Bend was a seasonally adjusted 14 percent in December, according to the Oregon Employment Department.

The Senate’s solution is a $15 billion package of tax incentives for companies that hire people who had been unemployed, subsidized bonds for state and local governments, and an extension of authorization for federal transportation programs.

But economists and Central Oregon economic development officials said the bill would likely lead to only a small number of jobs being created, compared to the country’s high unemployment rate.

Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Economy.com, said the bill should help the economy but that it’s not enough.

“I think all the elements of it will be very helpful,” Zandi said in a conference call with reporters on Thursday. “I think it’s a good step, but it’s too small.”

Any incentive that nudges employers toward hiring new workers should help, said Roger Lee, executive director of Economic Development for Central Oregon, but only on the margins.

“For larger companies it could make the difference between hiring 30 people or 31,” Lee said, in a hypothetical example. “After all, there must be a production, revenue or some other logical reason to have extra labor within any business.”

More important than the outline of the tax incentive might be the process employers have to go through to claim it, he said.

“We see federal programs created with good congressional intent that wind up being useless because the amount of paperwork and time required to complete exceeds the benefit of the incentive,” Lee said.

How well the administration spends the remaining $250 billion of the nearly $800 billion stimulus bill could have a far greater economic impact than the $15 billion jobs proposal, Zandi said.

“We have to do much, much more to get that money out,” Zandi said. “I think we have to have a much more expedited and rigorous process.”

Oregon’s U.S. senators, Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, sent a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., on Friday, expressing disappointment that extensions of unemployment benefits and COBRA temporary health benefits were not included in the bill.

“Allowing these vital benefits to expire will only dampen and delay the economic recovery that Congress has worked to generate over the past year,” Wyden and Merkley wrote in the letter. “An extension of these benefits, on the other hand, will pump resources directly into local economies.”

While Build America Bonds have quickly become a major way for local governments to fund infrastructure projects, Oregon counties and towns have been slow to use the new instruments. No Central Oregon government has used the new bonds.

Only two Oregon governments have issued Build America Bonds, according to the U.S. Treasury Department: the Yamhill County School District and the Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District, for a total of $22 million. That’s only about one-third of a percent of the bonds available nationwide.

Build America Bonds were partially crafted by Wyden, who pitched the bond program as a way to let local governments borrow money more cheaply for infrastructure projects, like roads and bridges. Under the stimulus bill, local governments would still have to pay back their bonds, but the program subsidizes 45 percent of interest payments for local governments deemed “recovery zones” by the Treasury Department.

That means the county would pay just 5.5 percentage points on a bond with a 10 percent interest rate, for example. The new jobs bill would still subsidize the interest rate but at a slightly lower level.

Wyden’s office had estimated the program would create 3,500 jobs in Oregon, based on an economic analysis by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. That was based on state and local governments using the $103 million in bonds that had been allotted to Oregon.

The bond figure will likely increase this spring, when the Oregon Department of Transportation plans to sell some of the bonds to fund state bridge repair projects, said federal affairs adviser Travis Brouwer.

“ODOT is looking at including these in the mix of bonds issued for the … State Bridge Program in April, and it is highly likely that Build America Bonds will comprise a significant portion of the bond issuance, unless market conditions change significantly,” Brouwer said, in a written statement. “This will help save the state money on debt service, allowing state highway tax revenues to stretch further.”

Merkley was out of the country all week on a congressional tour of Afghanistan, Pakistan and northern India and could not be reached for comment.