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Written by

Transportation for America

Published on

May 22, 2017

Tomorrow (Tuesday, May 23), the Trump administration is expected to release their full budget proposal for all government programs in fiscal year (FY) 2018, which begins on October 1 of this year, and we wanted to provide our members an early update with what to expect.

Last week a spreadsheet that contained some details about funding levels leaked and was widely circulated in Washington. Overall, the numbers in this leaked budget proposal align with the topline numbers in the initial “skinny” budget proposal released back in March.

We expect this week’s full budget proposal to significantly cut funding for the transit Capital Improvements Grant (CIG) program and long-distance Amtrak service:

  • $1.232 billion is allocated for the CIG program, about half of the $2.4 billion the program received in FY 2017. These cuts seem to align with the Administration’s proposal in the skinny budget to only fund projects with existing full funding grant agreements.
  • $525 million is allocated to Amtrak National Network, less than half of the FAST Act authorized amount of $1.1 billion and less than half of the FY 2017 appropriation. The Northeast Corridor would receive $235 million, which is also a cut from the $328 million allocated in FY 2017.

The leaked budget is clearly a draft, as some line items are repeated, or missing altogether. Programs such as REG or TIFIA that are not listed or appear to be zeroed out may be a reflection on the incomplete nature of the draft.

However, as we’ve believed all along, significant cuts to Amtrak’s national network and the program for all new transit construction are likely to appear in the final version of the administration’s 2018 budget proposal. T4America will provide members with a detailed summary of the final budget once it is released. We’ll send you a copy but logged-in members will also be able to see it within our public blog post that goes up either Tuesday or Wednesday at https://t4america.org/news-and-blog

Please stay tuned for additional information.

Tags:

2018 budget budget CIG Fast Act President Trump TIFIA transit funding