July 20, 2017

The Senate Appropriations Committee on July 20 adopted a plan of spending allocations for each of its twelve subcommittees for fiscal year 2018. The plan gives the Transportation-HUD subcommittee $3.5 billion more than does the House allocation plan, which should allow the subcommittee to draft a bill (as soon as next week) that restores the House’s cuts to TIGER grants, mass transit new starts, and Amtrak and also maintains much of the House bill’s $900 million for programs that may directly benefit the Gateway Development Program in New York and New Jersey.

The Senate plan writes to the fiscal 2017 spending totals – $551.1 billion for defense and $518.5 billion for non-defense. This is a drastic departure from the House plan on defense – the Defense Subcommittee numbers are $71 billion apart in the House and Senate plans. Non-defense totals in the Senate plan are $7.8 billion above the House numbers collectively – a $4.9 billion cut in State/Foreign Operations and a $569 million cut in Commerce-Justice-Science allow an $8.1 billion increase in Labor-HHS-Education, the $3.5 billion increase in Transportation-HUD, and other, smaller increases in other subcommittees.

The committee press release seems to indicate that the 2018 bill will not include a highway contract authority rescission (see last paragraph here).

(Photo:Anthony Quintano, Flickr Commons)