An industry coalition of public and private sector stakeholders in the transportation industry recently wrote to Congress to extend their appreciation for the robust transportation infrastructure funding included in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA).
However, the goals of the new law cannot be achieved if the funding is not made available. Here are some of the key parts of the letter calling on Appropriations Committees to provide the historic levels of funding in the new law:
The Appropriations Committees in the House and Senate played a critical role in the development and passage of this historic legislation that will benefit the entire country. With that said, we can begin to fulfill the promise of the IIJA expected by the public only when full-year appropriations for Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 becomes available.
Without a full-year appropriations bill, we anticipate that states, local governments, and public transit agencies will not be able to access the IIJA’s roughly 20 percent funding increase for highway formula programs and more than 30 percent increase for public transit formula programs, along with any new transportation initiatives that Congress provided for in the IIJA. Instead, under the current CR that extends three months past the signing of the IIJA, the obligation limitation that dictates spending levels for many federal transportation programs remains well below what is included in the infrastructure legislation; the illustrative estimate of highway formula dollars remaining inaccessible under the CR is attached.
We also note the programs hit the hardest by this lower obligation limitation are new formula programs—Carbon 2 Reduction and PROTECT—which will force state and local governments to delay implementation of a key Congressional priority in the IIJA. The signing organizations have advocated for and continue to advocate for a full-year appropriations bill. However, a delay of almost six months since the beginning of FY 2022 in providing the much-touted funding increases from the IIJA is wholly unacceptable and will cause significant project disruptions, reduced construction and manufacturing employment, and delays in delivering critical transportation infrastructure improvements—just when Americans were promised the most ambitious infrastructure package of our time.
Given the hard work and effort that Congress put into the IIJA, we urge you to put the muchneeded infrastructure and safety investments envisioned in this bipartisan package to work as soon as possible. We do not make this request lightly, but if Congress is unable to finish the THUD Appropriations bill by February 18, 2022, we ask that Congress includes an anomaly to provide full obligation limitation levels in any future CR in order to fully honor the IIJA’s funding levels for all transportation-related programs.