A $787 billion economic recovery bill on its way to final passage Friday in the U.S. Senate is a boon for energy and technology companies but a disappointment for businesses generally.

The business tax cuts in the bill shrunk during negotiations to a tiny fraction of its overall cost. Broad-based tax cuts for businesses under the final agreement total only about $10 billion.

Pharmaceuticals, high-tech companies and other multinationals lost an early battle to add their top priority to the bill: bringing profits home from overseas at a reduced tax rate. This was killed in a lopsided Senate floor vote.

The biggest blow came in the final stages of negotiations. That's when lawmakers eliminated a tax refund for net operating losses for all firms except those with gross receipts of $15 million and below.

"They scaled it back to the point where it's virtually meaningless," said House Ways and Means Committee ranking Republican Dave Camp of Michigan. "Thousands of employers will not be able to take advantage of that, and when they figure that out they're going to be mad."

Ironically, the Senate's move to add a tax cut may have led to the eventual slashing of business tax cuts in the package. When the Senate added a $70 billion provision to protect middle-class taxpayers from the alternative minimum tax in 2009, lawmakers began looking for places to trim to make room.

"We would have preferred to see more in the package on the tax reduction side," said Bruce Josten, executive vice president for government affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "We think [business tax cuts] would have given more economic punch than would the AMT, for example," Josten said.

Some sectors, such as struggling automakers, fared better than others. General Motors Corp. (GM) won a $3 billion tax benefit that helps it to preserve tax attributes that it otherwise would have lost under restructuring plans.

Consumers making new car purchases can get a new deduction for state and local sales taxes, worth $1.7 billion over 10 years. This will be a boon for carmakers.

Automakers as well as other businesses will get a one-year extension of a provision that lets companies get cash for research tax credits that have built up unused.

Government contractors, from large defense giants to food service providers, were able to postpone a 3% tax withholding requirement by another year, until 2012. That was less than the outright repeal they had sought.

Energy firms may reap the biggest rewards from the package, which is flush with dollars for investment in renewable energy and smart grid technologies.

The bill includes $11 billion to improve the electric grid, including to provide for more efficient transmission of power from renewable sources. That would help smart grid technology providers such as Ambient Corp. (ABTG) and Echelon Corp. (ELON).

Wind energy producers such as GE Energy, a unit of General Electric Co. (GE), and Spain's Iberdrola SA (IBE.MC), would gain under a three-year extension of green energy production tax credits. Renewable energy tax incentives total $15 billion.

Wind firms and solar companies such as SunPower Corp. (SPWRA) won a new grants program designed to provide a direct cash infusion to projects that have lagged because of tight credit markets and a lack of tax credit investors.

Technology firms generally are happy with the infusion of money for health information technology and the "smart" energy grid. They are also pleased with some $7 billion in grants for new high-speed Internet connections in rural areas, according to Bruce Mehlman, who is co-chairman of the Internet Innovation Alliance, or IIA.

In addition to the smart grid money, the bill provides $19 billion to help health providers adopt electronic medical records systems. Both provisions will be a boon to technology companies that have built those systems and are waiting for companies to buy them, Mehlman said.

Members of IIA include AT&T Inc. (T), Alcatel-Lucent (ALU), Nortel Networks Corp. (NRTLQ) and Corning Inc. (GLW).

Telecom analysts say mid-sized and rural phone companies such as Qwest Communications International Inc. (Q), CenturyTel Inc. (CTL) and Embarq Corp. (EQ) will be pleased with the $7 billion in grants for building Internet networks in rural areas. But the money probably isn't enough to change Internet buildout plans from bigger companies such as AT&T and Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ).

The Internet grants also will be of some use to equipment manufacturers and semiconductor vendors like Corning, Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO), Juniper Networks Inc. (JNPR), ADTRAN Inc. (ADTN) and Broadcom Corp. (BRCM), according to analysts at Stifel Nicolaus.

Amtrak got $1.3 billion for security upgrades and improvements along its northeast corridor. The final stimulus bill also includes $8 billion for high-speed passenger-rail service - four times the amount allocated in the Senate version. The money will be used mostly to improve existing routes rather than on expansion.

Money to shore up states' flailing budgets got trimmed in the final version. The lion's share of a $53.6 billion state "stabilization fund" is devoted to education funding, but some of that money can be used to fund public safety and critical services.

A provision in an earlier House version was cut that would have provided for a separate, $20 billion line item solely for school construction.

House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-Calif., said he worries that school superintendents will be tempted to use the stabilization funds for teacher salaries and other school funding commitments rather than repairs. "These things have a way of sliding," Miller said.

Freshman House member Rep. Dan Maffei, D-N.Y., said it's frustrating that the school construction funding didn't get its own line item in the bill, but he noted that it still contains plenty of money to fund school repairs. "It's not as straightforward as I would have liked," Maffei said.

-By Fawn Johnson, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-9263; fawn.johnson@dowjones.com

-By Martin Vaughan, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-9244; martin.vaughan@dowjones.com

(Josh Mitchell contributed to this story.)