June 13, 2019 – This week, the Federal Railroad Administration announced that it had selected projects to receive $326 million in railroad grants from the fiscal year 2018 appropriation for the CRISI grant program (Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements),
June 14, 2019 – This week, the U.S.
June 14, 2019 – The House of Representatives finally started considering general appropriations bills for fiscal year 2020 this week, but there were early snags when a small core of anti-domestic-spending Republicans forced the House to take 70 roll call votes on amendments over an 18-hour period.
June 14, 2019 – The House Appropriations Committee on June 11 approved a $64 billion draft bill making appropriations for the Homeland Security Department for fiscal year 2020.
Tuesday, June 18 – Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation – Subcommittee on Security – subcommittee hearing on drone security, focusing on enhancing innovation and mitigating supply chain risks (witness list here) – 2:30 p.m., SD-562 Dirksen.
June 14, 2019 – This is a list of all the transportation-related amendments filed with the House Rules Committee that may or may not be offered to the FY 2020 Transportation-HUD appropriations bill.
June 13, 2019 – How much money does the federal government currently spend on “infrastructure”? It’s a question that needs to be answered in order to put calls for increased infrastructure spending in perspective.
June 7, 2019 – The House Appropriations Committee on June 4 approved a $87.7 billion budget for the U.S. Department of Transportation, as part of an overall Transportation-Housing appropriations bill that passed by party-line vote of 29 yeas to 21 nays.
June 7, 2019 – A new report issued May 30 by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says that if the federal government were to start using “fair value accounting” to estimate the “market risk” of federal loan programs, the cost to the government of making a TIFIA surface transportation loan would increase nearly fivefold – and the cost of making a loan under the new WIFIA water infrastructure loan program would increase twentyfive-fold.
June 7, 2019 – Per capita vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in the United States is now at 9,880 miles per person, up for the fourth year in a row. But the trends in per capita VMT since 1981 have not been distributed evenly across all states.
June 7, 2019 – The House of Representatives will begin floor consideration of the fiscal 2020 appropriations bill this week, starting with a five-bill “minibus” package based on the Labor-HHS-Education spending bill (H.R. 2740). The Energy and Water Development appropriations bill, which includes the budget for the Army Corps of Engineers’ water resources program, has been incorporated as Division E of the package.
June 6, 2019 – This week, the House Appropriations Committee released the text of its draft fiscal 2020 appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security, and the bill was approved by voice vote during a brief subcommittee markup session on June 5.
Monday, June 10, 2019 – House Rules – full committee hearing on the first, five-bill “minibus” appropriations package that includes FY 2020 Energy and Water appropriations (bill text here) – 5:00 p.m., H-313, The Capitol.
Tuesday, June 4 – House Homeland Security – full committee hearing on TSA racial profiling (witness list to be posted here) – 10:00 a.m., 310 Cannon.
May 24, 2019 – At a closed-door caucus meeting yesterday, Senate Republicans voted to make permanent their ban on allowing any of their GOP colleagues from requesting earmarks in spending, tax or tariff bills.
May 24, 2019 – Yesterday afternoon, Congressional leaders struck a deal with President Trump to expedite a $19.1 billion of disaster relief aid for victims of various hurricanes, wildfires, floods, typhoons, and earthquakes that have occurred over the past year.
May 24, 2019 – The much-ballyhooed May 22 White House meeting between President Trump and Congressional Democrats was over almost as soon as it started, as the President called a halt to further discussions with Democrats because of their investigations of his Administration.
May 23, 2019 – This morning, the House Subcommittee on Transportation-Housing Appropriations formally approved the draft fiscal year 2020 Transportation-Housing appropriations bill.
May 21, 2019 – The behavior of motorists in the U.S. has changed a lot in the last 35 or so years, and these changes have led to a noticeable drop in per-capita gasoline usage in the 21st Century. But this decline has not been even across all states, and if Congress ever gets the Highway Trust Fund self-sufficient again and based largely on gasoline taxes, these discrepancies in state gasoline usage patterns could eventually have an effect on highway funding debates.
May 17, 2019 – The full House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee held a hearing yesterday on the participation of state-owned entities in the public transportation and freight rail sectors. The clear focus was the impact that the state-owned Chinese rail company CRRC is having on the U.S. mass transit rail car market, and on the independently-owned but state-subsidized electric bus company BYD’s entrance into the transit bus market as well.