Just a few weeks after Rep. Paul Ryan released his House budget that proposed cutting or eliminating many important transportation programs, the key Senate committee’s budget for transportation (and housing) for next year contains some good news. This doesn’t mean that the fight is over for this year — this budget will still have to be reconciled with the House, which is no easy feat. And we’ll have a battle at that point once more. It’s been tougher and tougher in the last few years to pass actual budgets for these individual programs. This year will be no different, especially heading into an election this fall.

The so-called deficit supercommittee, a bipartisan group of 12 lawmakers tasked with agreeing to $1.2 trillion in spending cuts, was supposed to unveil its recommendations this week for an up-or-down vote in Congress. But the group, established in a down-to-the-wire debt ceiling deal between President Obama and Congressional Republicans this past summer, looks like it [...]

Leading negotiators in the House and Senate released a compromise spending bill to fund the U.S. Department of Transportation, alongside several other departments, through the end of the current fiscal year in September 2012. The measure is known as a “minibus” because it collapses several appropriations bills into one package, The conference agreement between the [...]

WASHINGTON, DC  — Today, members of the U.S. Senate voted 69 to 30 to approve a $128 billion “minibus” appropriations bill for the U.S. Department of Transportation, alongside several other departments. James Corless, director of Transportation for America, issued the following statement in response: “Today’s vote in the Senate to preserve current levels of infrastructure investment [...]

With just hours to spare before the deadline, the House, Senate and President Obama have agreed (in principle) on an agreement to raise the debt ceiling. While the details of that agreement are circulating in the media, the implications for the ongoing efforts to reauthorize the transportation bill — as well as funding for current [...]

Funding for high-speed rail was eliminated from this year’s budget as other transportation programs absorbed deep cuts, according to the details of the deal between President Obama and Congressional Republicans to cut $38 billion in spending and keep the government funded through September. The New Starts program, a key source of funding for transit projects, is reduced to $1.6 billion, while the TIGER program is reduced to $528 million from $600 million, a loss of $72 million.

Down-to-the-wire negotiations late last night between President Obama, House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid resulted in a budget deal containing about $38 billion in reductions from current spending levels and the prevention of a government shutdown. The High Speed and Intercity Passenger Rail program will receive $1 billion, a reduction of $1.5 billion from the previous year, and the New Starts program — a key revenue source for transit projects throughout the country — loses $280 million, though the figure is reportedly sufficient to fund projects that have already received grants from USDOT.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan has put forward a proposed budget resolution calling for sweeping changes that would have a profound impact on the nation’s investments in infrastructure. The budget would cut at least $17 billion in transportation investment per year over the next several years, according to one analysis, and would narrow rather than broadens travel options for Americans by shortchanging rail, public transit and walking and biking.

The federal government will keep the lights on next week after the U.S. Senate easily approved a two-week stopgap measure containing $4 billion in spending cuts. The vote was 91-9. Only two budget items – $650 million from a one-time Federal Highway Administration program – and a handful of legislative earmarks are transportation related.

UPDATE, 2/19/11, 9am: The House voted 235-189 in favor of an FY2011 budget containing $60 billion in spending cuts, including $430 million in cuts to the New Starts program that funds new transit construction, $152 million in cuts to Amtrak and a zeroing out of both high-speed rail and the innovative TIGER program. No Democrats supported the continuing resolution and three Republicans opposed it.