Dive Brief:
- President Donald Trump's budget reveals cuts to, or the elimination of, numerous crucial federal infrastructure programs, despite continual campaign promises to invest heavily in failing infrastructure around the country, CNN reported.
- Rick Mulvaney, the President's budget director, claims that Trump's campaign pledge of $1 trillion toward infrastructure refurbishment will be upheld via a yet to be described "infrastructure package."
- The new budget outline impacts surface transportation hardest, through the elimination of a $500-million-a-year federal stimulus package from 2009 that supported a wealth of projects, including upgrading bridges to creating new street car lines. The new budget, however, cuts all funding for rail or bus lines.
Dive Insight:
Significant cuts to infrastructure spending are pending, though the Trump administration states that support already exists where the cuts are occurring. Inefficiencies and redirected funding sources have also been cited as the reason behind the cuts. The Department of Transportation (DOT) has been hit especially hard, with a 13% cut in fiscal year 2018 spending.
The 13% cut reflects a $2.4 billion reduction, $500 million of which will come from the gutting of the grant program Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER), which promotes competition between local governments for funding available only to states.
Port funding is also under the gun through the elimination of TIGER. In 2016 alone, the program granted $61.8 million to U.S. ports for multimodal infrastructure improvements for docks, rails and roads. In fact, the American Association of Port Authorities (AAPA) recommends the expansion of the TIGER program or its equivalent, with an annual budget of $1.25 billion.
