After waiting until nearly halfway through FY2018 to set spending levels, Congress is out of the gate quickly on the FY19 appropriations process. The process of setting spending levels is easier this year, because the FY18 spending package included a two-year agreement on funding levels that were significantly more generous than what the Trump administration had proposed. As an example, the transportation-housing spending max spending level for FY19 is more than $1 billion higher than the FY18 cap, w
The US Department of Transportation has announced that the long-standing TIGER program, in which USDOT awards up to $25 million apiece to multimodal transportation projects across the country, has been renamed the BUILD program. The renaming of TIGER signals USDOT’s intention to put the Trump administration’s stamp on it.
Six months into fiscal year 2018, Congress has finally set spending levels for federal agencies and programs. The $1.3 trillion omnibus appropriations bill includes great news for many programs for which the Trump administration proposed elimination or significant cuts.
A week ago, Congress reached agreement on overall spending caps, which would allow for significant increases in defense and domestic spending in FY2018 and FY2019. Their agreement includes an additional $10 billion per year for two years to put towards different kinds of infrastructure investments (broader than just transportation). Congress now has about six weeks to divide those overall increases into the funding allocations for federal programs and agencies.
On January 30, President Trump delivered his state of the union. A few sentences in his speech referenced the long-delayed infrastructure package, as he called on Congress to pass a bill that would pair any Federal dollars with state, local, and private investments to “build gleaming new roads, bridges, highways, railways, and waterways.”
There was a pile-up of legislative priorities in December, and Congress ended up getting a tax bill through but punted action on spending levels, the DACA immigration policy, and stabilizing the health insurance market to 2018. This means that January is now full of deadlines.
With the remaining days of the year quickly winding down, Congress has a very short window to address a legislative pileup.
Congress has not yet reached agreement on spending levels for government agencies, with the current extension ending on December 8. There is likely to be an extension for another few weeks or even until early January. Negotiations have been challenging, as they include spending levels as well as a resolution to the end of the DACA immigration policy for young people—so a government shutdown is not out of the picture.
We have been beating the drum for several months now to encourage states to fully spend their Transportation Alternatives Program (TAP) funds before the critical deadline of September 30, 2017, when any unused FY2014 funds would expire after four years.
Congress continues to debate 2018 federal government spending levels, which must be settled by December. Unfortunately, the House of Representatives has included in its appropriations bill an amendment offered by Rep. Woodall (R-GA) that could be harmful to local control of transportation funding.