March 28, 2019 – The Senate subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies held a hearing on March 27 inviting Secretary of Transportation, Elaine Chao as a witness to review the FY20 budget request for USDOT.
“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” — The Bible “All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.” — Battlestar Galactica The skyrocketing deficits of the mid-1980s led Congress to enact the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings law in 1985, which […]
March 20, 2019 – The President’s fiscal year 2020 budget request for the Department of Homeland Security includes proposals for a small cut in Transportation Security Administration operational funding, a large cut in Coast Guard procurement, and a two-thirds cut in Federal Emergency Management Agency transportation security grants.
March 21, 2019 – Amtrak sent its fiscal 2020 budget request to Congress yesterday and asked for $141 million less than Congress actually appropriated for fiscal year 2019. The 2020 request of $1.80 billion is the amount authorized by Congress in the FAST Act of 2015, but Congressional appropriations for Amtrak and other railroad programs in 2018 and 2019 have exceeded the authorized amounts significantly.
Tuesday, March 26 – House Transportation and Infrastructure – Subcommittee on Aviation – subcommittee hearing on investment in airports (witness list here) – 10:00 a.m., HVC-210, Capitol Visitors Center. Tuesday, March 26 – House Appropriations – Subcommittee on Transportation and Housing – subcommittee hearing on budget requests from House members – 11:00 a.m., 2358-A Rayburn.
March 20, 2019 – What a difference a year makes. In 2019, the Trump Administration requested zero new funding for discretionary grant programs. In 2020, they are requesting $4 billion.
March 19, 2019 – The details of the President’s budget proposal for fiscal 2020 make it clear that, if the Trump Administration has a plan for long-term fiscal solvency of the Highway Trust Fund, they aren’t presenting it in this budget
March 19, 2019 – The Federal Highway Administration, in a funding notice (N4510.835) dated March 15, formally gave states DOTs $3.2 billion in highway funding from the general fund of the Treasury provided by the omnibus fiscal 2019 appropriations act.
March 19, 2019 – As part of the release of the supporting documentation for the 2020 budget request, the Office of Management and Budget has released the 2020 sequestration preview report which, for the first time, lets Congress know the exact amount of the Budget Control Act caps on discretionary spending for 2020. It also contains the Trump Administration’s plans for getting around those spending caps in 2020 and 2021 and for extending the caps through 2029.
March 19, 2019 – In the full fiscal year 2020 federal budget request released this week, the assumptions for the tax receipts of transportation excise taxes over the next decade made by the White House Office of Management and Budget are significantly above the estimates for those taxes made by the Congressional Budget Office. And the Administration once again boosts its overall receipt totals by requesting new transportation user fees that Congress is unlikely to approve.
March 13, 2019 – The outline of President Trump’s fiscal year 2020 budget request, released this week, calls for unified federal deficits exceeding $1 trillion in each of fiscal years 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 before finally dipping below ten figures in 2024.
March 14, 2019 – The few documents made available this week describing President Trump’s budget request for fiscal year 2020 show that the President is proposing to cut Corps of Engineers water infrastructure funding by 30 percent and cut the water infrastructure grant and loan programs of the Environmental Protection Agency by 33 percent.
March 11, 2019 – President Trump has released a fiscal year 2020 budget request today that calls for $84.1 billion in gross budgetary resources for the U.S. Department of Transportation today, a $3.5 billion decrease from 2019.
March 8, 2019 – As we get ready to receive the fiscal 2020 budget request next week, the White House Office of Management and Budget has now closed the scorekeeping books on the appropriations bills for fiscal 2019.
March 8, 2019 – The White House is scheduled to release most of its budget request for fiscal year 2020 on the morning of Monday, March 11, 2019. We appear to be about to repeat much of the experiences of the President Trump’s first budget request, two years ago (fiscal year 2018).
March 1, 2019 – This week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released its estimates of what the Budget Control Act spending caps on discretionary appropriations will be in the upcoming fiscal year (2020) and the final year under which the caps currently apply, 2021.
February 20, 2019 – Do the final FY19 appropriations bills keep the promise of an additional $10 billion per year for infrastructure made in the February 2018 bipartisan budget deal?
February 15, 2019 – The final fiscal 2019 appropriations package that passed Congress yesterday appropriates a net $49.4 billion for the Department of Homeland Security (excluding the FEMA disaster relief fund and mandatory Coast Guard pay), a $1.7 billion increase over fiscal year 2018.
February 1, 2019 – The five-week shutdown of large swaths of the federal government has ended, but hopes for finishing the appropriations process for fiscal year 2019 hinges on progress on the Homeland Security appropriations bill, now before a House-Senate conference committee.
February 1, 2019 – This week, complete subcommittee memberships for House Appropriations and Senate Commerce were named, along with some key subcommittee chairmen and ranking members elsewhere.