Both the House and Senate passed legislation today extending the payroll tax cut through the end of this year.

The bill passed the House on a 293-132 vote; the Senate voted 60-36 to approve it. President Barack Obama said he will sign the measure as soon as possible.

As a result, workers will be able to keep the extra $40 in their paychecks that Congress gave them last year. People who have been out of work for more than a year will keep receiving unemployment benefits. And doctors won’t get a pay cut when they treat Medicare patients.

But there were other big winners in today’s votes: the wireless broadband industry, the businesses that feed off this industry, the Americans who love their smartphones, and the economy at large. To help pay for the $150 billion bill, Congress directed the Federal Communications Commission to auction spectrum to wireless broadband providers so they can expand their networks.

“Congressional action comes not a minute too soon,” said Mary Brown, director of government affairs for Cisco. “U.S. mobile traffic grew 172 percent in 2011, and growth is increasing exponentially as consumers adopt ever-more-powerful devices.”

Dan Varroney, acting president and CEO of the TechAmerica trade association, said this spectrum auction “is a potential watershed moment for the technology industry. Spectrum is the lifeblood for technological innovation, and by authorizing incentive auctions and ensuring that sufficient unlicensed spectrum is available, this legislation will spur investment and job creation.”

Obama, who won a major political victory when Republicans agreed to extend the payroll tax cut, also likes the spectrum auctions.

These auctions, he said, will help the United States “out-innovate the rest of the world by unleashing mobile broadband,” he said.

For the business community, the only downside to the passage of this bill was that it didn’t include extensions of various tax breaks that have expired or will soon expire. These breaks include the research and development tax credit and tax credits that benefit specific industries.

That could be a problem, since there may not be another good legislative vehicle for these so-called tax extenders before the election. The fate of these tax breaks might not be known until November or December, when Congress must decide whether income tax rates will revert to their pre-2001 levels in 2013. The uncertain state of these business tax breaks jeopardizes investment in some industries.

Take wind power, for example. A federal production tax credit (PTC) for wind energy is scheduled to expire at the end of this year.

“The stakes here could not be clearer,” said Dense Bode, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association. “Economic studies have shown that congressional inaction on the PTC will kill 37,000 American jobs, shutter plants, and cancel billions of dollars in private investment. Congress needs to understand that, with PTC uncertainty, layoffs have already begun, and further job losses and even plant closings will accelerate with each month we near expiration in December.”