Obama's 2017 budget slashes several federal construction programs — but 'clean transportation' gets a big win

Dive Brief:

President Barack Obama has proposed spending $320 billion over the next decade on a "clean transportation" plan, which includes $32 billion per year to green the transportation sector by funding public transit, an urban planning initiative and clean vehicle research, the White House announced. The plan is part of the fiscal 2017 $4.1 trillion budget released Tuesday and could be paid for by a $10-per-barrel fee on oil production, according to the White House.
The Associated General Contractors of America found that overall, the proposed 2017 budget includes $141 billion for construction programs — 14% higher than the $123.9 billion allocated in 2016's budget, according to the Engineering News-Record.
However, the budget would cut the Army Corps of Engineers' civil works funding by 22% to $4.6 billion, reduce the Federal Aviation Administration’s Airport Improvement Program construction grants by 13% to $2.9 billion, trim the General Services Administration new construction budget by 17% to $1.3 billion, and slice the Department of Veterans Affairs major construction budget by 58% to $528 million, according to the ENR.

Dive Insight:

Although construction funding overall would see a net gain if this budget is approved by Congress, if the "clean transportation" plan doesn't end up getting approved — as many Republican lawmakers have promised — the total construction allocation would be nearly unchanged from the previous year. Sean O’Neill, AGC congressional relations director for infrastructure advancement, told the ENR, "The major accounts that we do follow did see a decrease almost across the board."

Other parts of the plan transportation include:

A $10 billion annual increase for Federal Transit Administration programs to help states build new light rail and streetcars
A high-speed rail commitment of $7 billion per year
Double the existing funding for the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant program, which allows states to apply for funding for transportation projects that "will have a significant impact on the nation, a metropolitan area or a region."

Obama’s major step to improve the poor state of America’s infrastructure — 19th behind Poland, Hungary and Spain — echoes a call made by Brendan Bechtel, president of construction and engineering company Bechtel Group, Inc., in a USA Today op-ed piece last year. Bechtel urged federal and state legislators to make significant investment in the country’s deteriorating infrastructure a top priority so that future generations don’t "inherit a crumbling, unsafe, environmentally unfriendly, productivity-choking system several generations old."

Now that the proposed budget has moved to Congress for debate, construction industry lobbyists will work to convince Congress to raise the construction allocations that were cut in Obama's proposal.