WASHINGTON — A threatened automatic cut to federal transportation funding, known as rescission, was avoided Thursday night when Congress repealed part of the 2015 Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act. The portion that was repealed mandated massive cuts that would have taken effect July 1, 2020.
President Trump signed the bill, which was added as an amendment to legislation needed to keep the government operating for another 30 days as legislators continue to hammer out a full budget package for fiscal 2020.
The rescission had been included in the FAST Act as a means to lower the program’s overall cost.
Rep. Sam Graves, the Republican Ranking Member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said in a statement, “Our state and local officials will no longer have to worry about a massive $7.6 billion cut that would sideline important roadway improvements, bridge maintenance and replacement projects, and many more plans to upgrade and modernize our infrastructure system.”
Transit systems would have suffered as part of the overall funding cut. Paul Skoutelas, president of the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), applauded the work of Senate and House members, noting that the legislation prevents a “$1.2 billion cut to public transportation funding by blocking a 12% across-the-board funding cut to every transit agency in the nation in fiscal year 2020.”
The FAST Act, which authorizes $287 billion in transportation funding from the Highway Trust Fund, is due to expire Sept. 30, 2020.
Once again, Charles Landey is 100% correct. Hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving. Stay safe out there, as the weather is very unpredictable. Why yesterday and today here in Texas, low 80’s.
The same could be said for corporations, pharmaceuticals, farmers, law enforcement, courts, utilities, airlines, mining, agribusiness, military contractors & all the other little piggy’s feeding at the trough.
IAN – Democrat or Republican, same thing, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference, the head side or the dime or the ar$e side of the dime.
I haven’t been to Washington for many decades but I frequently fly in/ out of Washington/ Baltimore Thurgood Marshall or Washington/ Ronald Reagan on my way south. The obscene prosperity of that area, the wealthiest place on Earth, is breathtakingly beautiful and a great reminder of where our tax money is going. I have to wonder what our soldiers and sailors, paid subsistence wages, think of the real estate development in the area of the Pentagon and the CIA.
IAN, I believe in the United States Constitution. Per the Tenth Amendment, the federal government should barely exist and that’s what I believe. Amtrak is a federal issue; your local trolley or subway or bicycle trail is not.
If cities and states want federal dollars for local transit, they’re doing business with Satan.
Mr Selden you have Republicans giving out tax breaks and then spending money they don’t have.
Which do you prefer a tax and spend Democratic that at least raises the money to spend or Tax cut and spend republicans?
It’s what Congress does best: spending money it doesn’t have.