I won't answer for Kaus of course, but I think his first response would be that lower wages for workers were not the only or even the primary means of reducing building costs.  Rather, as several Kausfiles correspondents noted, the administrative burden of complying with Davis Bacon -- the forms, certifications, etc. -- are apprently the real driver of increased costs.  I seem to recall some claims that wages were most often not different in private vs. D-B jobs.  Of course, there is some logic to this since, as I understand D-B, it requires payment of the "prevailing wage."  Since the market theoretically determines the prevailing wage, it is the certification process that would be the real cost to a contractor.  That said, clearly the government has historically approved prevailing wages that were on the optimistic side (from the employees' perspective) in many cases, so I don't doubt that there will be some jobs affected by this decision.

Yes, 'and' and 'but' are logically equivalent.  The difference between 'A and B' and 'A but B' is that 'but' suggests that A and B don't exactly reinforce each other in making whatever point is being made.

For instance, "Brad Basher hit 43 home runs in 2005, but he had only 72 RBI."  My fictitious slugger hit 43 dingers AND batted in 72 runs, but it's the BUT that points out that he should have had a lot more ribbies with those 43 homers. 

Or, "Brad was a good thing for his team...OK, maybe not so good."

Same with the Davis-Bacon sentence: "Suspending Davis-Bacon would be good...OK, maybe not so good." 

The problem here is that, in both of the above examples, there's no implication that A and B are related, whether or not they're working at cross purposes.  But in the Davis-Bacon example, their connection is the real point:the unions are saying B=>A.  That's what's missing from the sentence; screw the ands and buts.

How the sentence really should have been structured: "The administration contended the move would reduce rebuilding costs and help open opportunities to minority-owned companies, but unions and other critics said it would do so by lowering pay for workers."

Matthew also ignores that the following sentence is just plain wrong:

But of course insofar as suspending Davis-Bacon would, in fact, reduce building costs it would do so by offering workers lower pay.

Kaus presented evidence that workers' pay in the Gulf Coast is actually higher now than it was prior to the storm and higher than the Davis-Bacon "prevailing wage".

So, while the left thinks that the Davis-Bacon suspension was a "gulf Coast Wage Cut", in actuality, there was a "Gulf Coast Wage Rise."

Moreover, since wages were already above the D-B prevailing levels, D-B itself had nothing to do with increasing wages, and thus every dime spent on compliance with D-B is a waste.

That lesson is stupid, just like the "no split infinitives" lesson and the "no ending sentences with prepositions" lesson. For those who value arbitrary rules over quality of expression.

I'm sorry Matt, I have to ask---did you watch Schoolhouse Rock as a kid? I'm guessing you were too young, but perhaps NYC public TV had resources mine did not. Did anyone else have Conjunction Junction turned on in their head when reading this blog?

SEC62:

I appreciate that your enforcement experience tells you these administrative issues should be minor for most construction companies.  On the other hand, my experience representing employers tells me that what may be "very minimal" in the eyes of someone in the enforcement business may be quite different to the actual employer.

First, yes all non-exempt (under FLSA) employees must be paid properly and have their hours recorded, regardless of D-B -- that's not the issue.  Nor is signing the certification.  In my view, the question is:  Is determining who qualifies for which official government job classification as easy as you say it is. 

You write that "Electricians are electricians, Sheet metal workers, are sheet metal, etc. It's very rare that legit businesses have no clue what there workers do all day."  That is simply a red herring.  You may know exactly what your employee does but either (a) not be able to fit him/her into the official job clasification; or (b) be forced to "upgrade" him/her to prevent the risk of a finding that you violated the rules.  For example, on a non-D-B job you may hire a laborer who moves beams, hauls concrete -- whatever -- most of the day but when the electrician needs him, he assists with the wiring.  Where should he go?  And if you say "electrician" remember that may mean he loses his job because we can't afford to pay laborers electrician rates.  Frankly, the permutations are endless -- it's just not true that everyone fits neatly into some government approved box. 

So, as I understand it, there really is a considerable administrative cost burden to taking on a D-B job.  This results in yet another advantage to the Haliburton types (i.e, the big guys who can absorb this stuff and/or those who do D-B jobs all the time).  My point is that D-B does not appear increase the wages of workers (other than in a few cases where the worker is probably being overpaid) and, back to the original post, I think it's certainly not logically required that workers wages go up in order for D-B to result in increased construction costs.