Federal Funding

With multiple versions of two years' worth of federal budgets flying around, some details are still emerging about what's in and what's out. At the end of last week we heard that the FY2011 budget, which has been sent to the president for his signature, includes $100 million for the Partnership for Sustainable Communities. According to HUD Sustainable Communities Director Shelley Poticha, the partnership was allocated $70 million for regional planning grants ($17.5 million is slated for regions with populations of less than 500,000) and $30 million for Community Challenge planning grants.

By a vote of 235 to 193, the House approved the GOP budget proposal for 2012, which cuts $6.2 trillion more from the budget over 10 years than President Obama’s proposal. A big portion of that bite comes out of transportation. Compared to Obama’s plan, it spends $633 billion less for transportation.

President Obama just finished his speech at George Washington University. He drew a sharp line between the Republican budget proposal and his own vision for reducing the deficit while preserving the social safety net.

With the FY2011 budget finally settled, it’s time for Washington to start fighting over 2012. President Obama released his 2012 budget proposal in February. The Republicans introduced theirs last week. And the House Democrats have just released theirs [PDF].

Four months ago – just days after the Democrats' "shellacking" at the polls – a bipartisan commission offered President Obama the chance to retake the budgetary high ground from Republicans, who had positioned themselves as the party of fiscal sanity. The blue-ribbon deficit commission – led by Erskine Bowles, President Bill Clinton's budget negotiator, and former Republican Senator Alan Simpson – detailed its agenda for getting federal revenues and spending into balance, capping both at 21 percent of GDP over the next 25 years [PDF]. Transportation advocates were gratified to see a strong recommendation for a 15-cent increase in the gas tax to stabilize the Highway Trust Fund.

Just when we thought transportation had gotten off relatively easy in the shutdown-aversion budget deal:

It’s Monday morning, and the government is open for business. In a last-minute agreement just an hour before the current budget extension was to expire Friday night, Democrats and Republicans avoided the nuclear option of a government shutdown.

A powwow between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, President Obama, and House Speaker John Boehner last night failed to yield a compromise that would put a budget in place before the government shuts down at midnight tonight. The failure of yet another attempt to negotiate makes a government shutdown all but inevitable.

With House GOP leadership making it abundantly clear that they would be pleased to return federal transportation policy to the 1950s, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works met today to get serious about the who, what and how of funding a 21st century transportation system.