As the Senate returns to work from a President's Day break, the politics of jobs legislation will smack Senators in the forehead, as Democrats try to muster 60 votes to force action this week on a slimmed down, $15 billion jobs bill.

But remember - this is post-Massachusetts - so Democrats start off with 59 votes in the Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) era, so they will need help from Republicans in order to push ahead.

Democrats won't even have that many today, because Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) was diagnosed last week with stomach cancer, and will be dealing with chemotherapy treatments.

So, if the bill is to move forward today, then Republicans will have to provide the votes.

The question they will ask themselves, is do they want to be slammed by the White House for blocking a jobs bill when unemployment is near 10% nationally?

We'll see.

Meanwhile, you may remember when we had the full text of the new Senate Democratic jobs bill, and how a number of pages dealt with reauthorization of federal highway programs.

I wondered at the time whether there was any legislative mischief in there, and sure enough, House Democrats say there certainly is.

First - a bit of background on highway funding squabbles between the House and Senate.  The important word is the "formula" that is used to determine which states get what money.

"The Senate bill skews the highway formula," charged Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-MN), the Chairman of the House Transportation Committee.

"I have serious concerns that the Senate amendment earmarks the significant highway discretionary program funds to a small, select group of States - four States receive 58 percent of the funding and 22 States receive nothing," Oberstar said.

The four states that get extra, according to Oberstar's staff, would be California ($278 million), Illinois ($151 million), Louisiana ($59 million) and Washington State ($55 million).

22 states would get up to $40 million extra:  Oregon ($40 million), Oklahoma ($36 million), Arkansas ($36 million), West Virginia ($35 million), Virginia ($29 million), Tennessee ($27 million), Minnesota ($25 million), New Jersey ($25 million), New York ($25 million) , District of Columbia ($19 million), Wisconsin ($15 million), Colorado ($13 million), Pennsylvania ($13 million), South Carolina ($13 million), Connecticut ($9 million), Alaska ($8 million), Michigan ($5 million), Indiana ($4 million), New Mexico ($4 million), Maryland ($3 million), Iowa ($2 million), Kentucky ($2 million), Mississippi ($2 million), Texas ($2 million), Arizona ($1 million), Alabama (<$1 million).

The rest of the states, would get nothing extra under this new Senate highway funding formula:

Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakoa, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont and Wyoming.

What's the old saying?  The big print giveth and the little print taketh away.