Congress is working to extend the surface transportation bill by six months, but one roadbuilding industry advocacy group is calling for a series of one-year extensions instead.
Transportation for America — a national nonprofit advocate for a transportation system that prioritizes road safety over speed and repairing existing infrastructure over building new — published a report July 30 (prior to the six-month extension proposal in Congress) calling for an immediate one-year extension of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
This call-to-action and its reasoning are aimed at the Trump administration. In the new report, T4A makes argues for the extension based on the Trump administration’s failure “to follow the existing law,” referencing primarily the White House’s recent attempts to withhold and rescind funding from states that did not vote for him, according to the New York Times. However, T4A has taken issue with several other moves the Trump administration made in the last year and highlights them as reasons to wait for the next administration before writing a new bill.
“The administration is disrespecting both the intent of Congress’s bipartisan action on the IIJA as well as the American people and their local communities getting jerked around by USDOT’s unprecedented action to withhold or rescind funding for grant programs, delay (possibly indefinitely) all transit Capital Investment Grants, reinterpret grant-funding criteria, and weaponize programs like the Safe Streets for All program,” T4A said in its report.
Powered byA series of one-year extensions, T4A says, will allow Congress to continue funding the IIJA and successfully write a new surface transportation bill under a new administration “that can be trusted to implement the law as written.”
What Did the Trump Administration Actually Do?
During Trump’s second term, USDOT has made several attempts to claw back or alter the distribution of funds approved by Congress under the Biden-era $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs (IIJA).
This includes the recently released new guidance for how federal NEVI funding for building electric vehicle charging stations will be spent, which USDOT says will “streamline applications, provide states with more flexibility, remove red tape from the program and bring it in line with Trump’s priorities.”
Among the Biden-era language removed from the NEVI guidance are references to engaging with underserved communities, targeting benefits to disadvantaged communities, promoting minority-owned and women-owned businesses and ways for EV charging to support emergency and evacuation needs. This new guidance was released six months after the administration froze the entire $5 billion program.
The administration has also grappled with 20 different U.S. states over withholding transportation funds as a consequence of not cooperating with the enforcement of immigration enforcement.
Last year, USDOT also overhauled the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise and Airport Concession Disadvantaged Business Enterprise programs, which will now be operated “in a nondiscriminatory fashion — in line with law and the U.S. Constitution.” The ruling specifically removes “race- and sex-based presumptions of social and economic disadvantage” and decrees the program must both help small businesses and serve the public.
