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House approves 2011 budget containing deep cuts to transportation

FINAL UPDATE, 2/19/11, 9am: The House voted 235-189 in favor of an FY2011 budget containing $60 billion in spending cuts.

No Democrats supported the continuing resolution and three Republicans opposed it. The Hill has more here, and the final roll call vote is here.

ORIGINAL POST: The U.S House of Representatives is currently debating a bill to fund the government through September of this year. As we noted earlier in the week, the budget under consideration contains deep cuts to transportation, including many of travel options Americans use and support.

Some of the most important cuts to transportation contained in the initial language include:

  • New Starts, the program that funds new transit construction, gets cut by $430 million. There is also a rescission of about $300 million in unspent 2010 (fiscal year) funds.
  • High-speed rail is cut completely and the CR would rescind essentially all funds from 2010. Other than the money already spent, this entire program is eliminated.
  • The innovative TIGER program is eliminated completely and the unspent/unobligated FY10 funds are rescinded.
  • Amtrak appears to be mostly intact, avoiding the cuts that were proposed by the GOP study committee.

These cuts are the wrong direction for a fragile economy and high unemployment rate. And, as a recent report from Smart Growth America noted, spending on public transportation and infrastructure maintenance is one of the best job-creation tools around. Why would Congress put that at risk?

As if those cuts were not bad enough, several members offered amendments that would go even deeper. Some of the amendments  include:

  • Amendment No. 453, which would eliminate all funding for Amtrak. (Sponsor: Rep. Connie Mack, R- Florida)
  • Amendment No. 45, which would reduce Amtrak funding by $447 million (Sponsor: Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas)
  • Amendment No. 204, which would remove funding for the White House Director of Urban Affairs (Sponsor: Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Louisiana)

A number of amendments would restore critical programs. These include:

  • Amendment No. 400, which would restore all Recovery Act funding (Sponsor: Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas)
  • Amendment No. 69, which would restore funding to the TIFIA grant program (Sponsor: Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colorado)
  • Amendment No. 44, which would restore most public transportation funding (Sponsor: Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-New York)

An amendment sponsored by Northern Virginia Democrat Gerry Connolly that would have restored cuts to the Washington DC Metro system was ruled out of order by House Republicans and will not come up for a vote.

Congress is expected to continue debating for several hours, with a final vote time still unclear. Amendments relating to the Department of Transportation have not yet been considered.

UPDATE, 2/17/11, 9:30am: The House took up or postponed action on two amendments of interest late last night:

  • Amendment No. 511 (Nadler), which would have restored funding to several transportation programs, was ruled as out of order for lack of a revenue source and will not come up for a vote.
  • Amendment No. 43 (Sessions), which would reduce Amtrak funding by $447 million, was postponed and is expected to receive a vote today.

UPDATE, 11:15am: Amendment No. 43 (Sessions), which sought to reduce Amtrak funding by $447 million, was defeated by a vote of 176-250.

UPDATE, 3pm: The House still has a number of amendments to consider on the Transportation and Housing portions of the budget. Members will continue debating into the evening, with a late vote expected on the full package.

UPDATE, 7pm: Amendment No. 204 (Scalise), which seeks to remove funding for several positions, including the White House Director of Urban Affairs, was approved by a vote of 241-171.

The Hill has more information on this vote.

UPDATE, 2/18/11, 10am: The House adjourned past 1am last night without voting on the bill. Debate continues today.

UPDATE, 12:45pm: The House is debating the “Republican Study Committee” amendment, which would add an across-the-board 5.5 percent cut to the entire budget, with exemptions for defense and homeland security. The amendment would also reduce legislative budgets by 11 percent.

Republican Rep. Dan Lungren, a member of the Committee, is opposing the amendment, saying the cuts to Capitol Police and legislative staff are too deep. House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers, Republican of Kentucky, also opposes the amendment.

UPDATE, 3:30pm: The amendment seeking an across-the-board spending cut of 5.5 percent was rejected by a vote of 147-281.

The Hill has more information.

President Obama proposes $556 billion, six-year federal transportation program

President Obama released a budget for the 2012 fiscal year this morning that includes a significant investment in our nation’s infrastructure and a long-overdue emphasis on options and accountability.

The $556 billion, six-year proposal for transportation reauthorization included in the budget is an ambitious standout in a largely sober blueprint. However, persistent unemployment — particularly in the construction industry — makes the case for forgoing infrastructure cuts in favor of investment. When more Americans are working, paying taxes and putting their dollars back into their communities, the deficit goes down too.

Yonah Freemark from the Transport Politic pointed out that the President’s budget continues the expansion of transportation options.

Though the Administration would increase funding for roads construction from $41 billion in the previous budget to $70 billion, that increase is dwarfed in percentage by proposed spending on transit, which would more than double from $8 billion annually currently to $22 billion. Over six years, spending on capital improvements for public transportation would add up to $119 billion.

Tanya Snyder at Streetsblog Capitol Hill also offered some initial reactions.

As promised, the budget also includes the $53 billion for high-speed rail over six years previewed by Vice President Biden in a speech last week.

True to the overall theme of cuts coupled with smarter investment, the plan consolidates 55 programs into just five and invests $30 billion in a National Infrastructure Bank to provide loans and grants to projects of regional and national significance that promote economic growth. The plan contains no earmarks and cancels a number of them still on the books.

The administration is also highlighting a new $32 billion competitive grant program modeled after the successful Race to the Top program in the U.S. Department of Education. This new approach would create incentives for states and regions to pursue their own innovations that reduce congestion, improve quality of life, make it easier for residents to get to work and recreation and enhance economic prosperity. Details about that program should be forthcoming at the U.S. DOT briefing about the budget this afternoon.

In addition, a “Fix-it-first” policy for highways and transit grants would make repair and maintenance of existing infrastructure a higher priority, a reform that would save lives and save money.

The plan does not specify a revenue source for the increases but “commits to work with Congress to ensure that the funding increases for surface transportation do not increase the deficit.”

The U.S. Department of Transportation is hosting a briefing at 2pm at which point many of these details will be further illuminated. T4 America will be releasing a formal statement early this afternoon.

Photo: AFP/Getty Images

House budget for the rest of 2011 has deep cuts for transportation

On the Friday before the President releases his budget for 2012 (forthcoming sometime this morning), the House Appropriations Committee, led by Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) released their funding proposal to carry the government through the rest of 2011.

Quick refresher: The government is currently operating under what’s known as a Continuing Resolution (CR) that expires in March. Congress has been under pressure since late in 2010 to pass a full budget, but have been passing Continuing Resolutions due to an inability to agree on and pass a budget. These CRs basically continue funding levels from the 2010 fiscal year until Congress manages to pass a budget for 2011. Or they pass a CR with cuts and lower funding, which is what the House has proposed.

The 2011 budget that passed out of the Appropriations Committee Friday afternoon has some significant cuts for transportation, and some of them mirror the proposal that came from the Republican Study Committee a few weeks ago. There are a lot of cuts to very worthwhile programs across the board, but here are some of the highlights (lowlights?) for transportation:

  • New Starts, the program that funds new transit construction, gets cut by $430 million. There is also a rescission of about $300 million in unspent 2010 (fiscal year) funds.
  • High-speed rail is cut completely and the CR would rescind essentially all funds from 2010. Other than the money already spent, this entire program is eliminated.
  • The innovative TIGER program is eliminated completely and the unspent/unobligated FY10 funds are rescinded.
  • Amtrak appears to be mostly intact, avoiding the cuts that were proposed by the GOP study committee.

These cuts target exactly the kinds of projects that can create the most jobs and can help get our economy moving. Costs for labor and material are low right now, making it a prime time to spend on infrastructure, and we know that spending on public transportation creates more jobs than other types of transportation spending.

While these cuts are indeed severe and may get some support in the House, this proposal will still have to make it through the Senate.

We’ll be back later today with some information on how you can contact your Representative and urge them to reject these cuts to critical transportation projects.

Proposed budget would gut transit spending, passenger rail funding

Sound Transit underground Originally uploaded by Transportation for America to Flickr.
A Seattle Sound transit light rail car moves through a tunnel south of downtown. Sound Transit’s new line was funded in part by the federal New Starts transit program.

The budget proposal from the Republican Study Committee, which consists of 165 of the 242 GOP House members, released a week or so ago, calls for completely eliminating the main federal transit program, zeroes out Amtrak, cuts all funding for the metro system in the nation’s capital and slashes $2.5 billion in high-speed rail grants.

This shortsighted proposal would derail with uncanny precision exactly the kind of investments that are most critical for creating jobs and developing a 21st Century transportation infrastructure. And as far as transportation spending goes, these are some of the investments that create the most jobs per dollar spent.

The proposal eliminates New Starts, the transportation program that funds all new transit projects in the country, and slashes high-speed rail funding — the same program touted by President Obama to great fanfare in last week’s State of the Union.

It even chops all federal funding for Washington DC’s transit authority, the very transit system that these legislators’ staff and neighbors rely on every day to get to and from work.

This budget is a trial-balloon for the budget fight to come. We need to waste no time making it clear that these kinds of cuts are short-sighted and unacceptable.

Sign our petition objecting to this assault on public transportation funding. We’ll deliver the petition with your signature along with a letter from us and our partners to lawmakers. (Are you a T4 America partner who wants to sign your org onto the letter? Contact Heather Brutz for more info.)

The lawmakers who crafted this budget clearly aren’t aware that millions of Americans — including their own constituents — rely on passenger rail and the types of transit projects these programs fund.

These are also the very projects that pay some of the most far-reaching economic dividends. Study after study has shown that every dollar spent on public transportation generates more jobs than any other form of transportation spending. This proposed budget cuts the investments that create the most jobs – an especially poor decision in the face of a recovering economy.

We can keep this proposal from becoming law if we speak up now and make it clear that Americans aren’t going to sit by as federal investments in transit are gutted.

Sign our petition to protect federal support for transportation and jobs!