As President Donald Trump pulls back on green funding, state officials are lobbying Congress to retain those dollars for other infrastructure projects that would be more palatable to the current administration and Republicans, like road and bridge repairs.
Republicans negotiating the nation’s next big infrastructure bill seem amenable to the idea, as long as it means they can move funding away from green projects and toward “traditional” ones.
“That’s laying asphalt, pouring concrete, building bridges and building roads,” said House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Sam Graves, R-Mo., in an interview. “Not environmental justice and Green New Deal mandates and all of these other things” found in the 2021 infrastructure law that funded billions of dollars in Biden-era priorities.
That bill, which expires in 2026, began as a typical surface transportation reauthorization bill but was greatly expanded by $550 billion in new spending.
Graves has said that his upcoming version will be scaled back.
State officials argue that there’s a way to pull back in scope without cutting funding, which they say has been essential for projects in their areas.
“Without [the infrastructure law], states would have had to scale back projects due to the rising cost of inflation,” said Jim Tymon, executive director of nonprofit American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, in an interview. “A new surface transportation bill aligns with the administration’s priorities as well as those of both chambers of Congress,” with the prior bill establishing a “baseline” for future funding.
Prior to 2021, surface transportation bills largely authorized funding to state infrastructure projects based on a formula. Those bills also extended the Highway Trust Fund and sometimes included advance appropriations and other policies.
Russell McMurry, commissioner for the Georgia Department of Transportation, said in a Senate Environment and Public Works hearing last month that such formula program funding is crucial for states because it is reliable and allows for long-term planning.
“We each do a state transportation improvement program … counting on reliable funding reliability from year to year in those core formula programs because it takes too long to deliver these projects,” McMurry said. “So we need that funding certainty in those core programs to know that we can deliver through the planning process, through the design, environmental right of way construction process to get the infrastructure delivered.”
Reliability
The last infrastructure law, however, added new discretionary grant programs to the Transportation Department’s funding repertoire. That funding is only available on a competitive application basis, which makes it a less reliable source of funding for state and local DOTs.
There’s no guarantee the discretionary programs will be funded year-over-year. Republicans in past spending bills have proposed cuts to those grant programs.
McMurry added that although his organization supports discretionary grants because they can help close funding gaps for very expensive projects, the infrastructure law’s discretionary grants have been slow to roll out.
Rather than rescind funds from those, state officials are proposing that Congress move that funding to formula programs. That way, states won’t lose out on any infrastructure law funding wins and Republicans can cut out “Green New Deal” programs.
Senate Environment and Public Works Chair Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said in an interview last week that she’s hoping to move some of that money to formula programs, although she added the committee’s Republican members are still reviewing discretionary programs in the last law.
Perhaps a harder pitch for state officials, however, is keeping the upcoming surface transportation reauthorization bill’s topline spending the same or greater than what came before.
To offset the cost, Republicans could look to the Highway Trust Fund.
The fund, which is fueled by gas tax revenues and flows to formula grant programs, has declined as cars and trucks have become more fuel efficient. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that without a sustainable fix, the fund will require an additional $211 billion from other sources to maintain current spending levels plus inflation through 2034.
Although efforts to ensure electric and hybrid vehicles pay their fair share of road usage have stalled in previous years, transportation leaders in Congress said they are hoping to address the shortfall in the surface transportation reauthorization bill.
Graves said that the Transportation Committee intends to mark up the bill by the fall. The current authorization expires Sept. 30, 2026, just before a midterm election where Republicans will fight to keep their trifecta in the federal government.
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