After months of speculation and anticipation, the U.S. House of Representatives Transportation & Infrastructure Committee (or “T&I,” as those of us in DC call it) advanced a surface transportation reauthorization bill, The BUILD America 250 Act, on a nearly unanimous basis.
This is the first major step in a process that happens every five or six years to determine how the federal government will fund highways, transportation infrastructure, and public transit across the country. Funding for highway and transit programs largely comes from the Highway Trust Fund, which means funding is guaranteed and does not have to be renegotiated by Congress every year like other government programs.
While moving major legislation through committee is a significant step and accomplishment, the chances that Congress passes a final transportation bill in the next few months remain slim for reasons explained below.
Behind the scenes, Republican T&I Chairman Sam Graves and Democratic Ranking Member Rick Larsen had been working on the text and negotiating for months. In mid-May, the Committee finally released the bill – amounting to 1,005 pages of legislative text. Later that week, the Committee convened for a 15+ hour session about the bill where they approved a batch of amendments, and voted to advance the legislation.
In other words: it moved very fast!
And while many other major policy areas remain stuck in partisan gridlock, this effort was impressively bipartisan. The Committee approved the bill by a resounding 62-2 vote.
For transit, the bill is a bit of a mixed bag, depending on one’s frame of reference and the type of funding one cares about most. On one hand, there is much less dedicated and guaranteed funding for large capital expansion projects for light rail. The funding for those programs and projects will continue to remain subject to annual spending by Congress, a return to pre-IIJA days. On the other hand, guaranteed contract authority funds (including formula funds and some competitive grants) would rise from $14.6 billion in FY26 to $16.8 billion in FY27.
Core transit formula funding would grow substantially. In the next fiscal year, the urban formula program — also known as 5307 funding, for areas with populations of 50,000 or more — would increase by about 10% and continue to tick up after that for the duration of the bill. The rural formula program, or 5311 funding, would increase by about 5%.
Chairman Graves is hoping the full House will take up the bill at some point in July, but it remains unclear whether that will happen.
The Senate process is also more complicated. Unlike the House, where one committee handles most of the policy in a transportation bill, the Senate has three committees with jurisdiction over key pieces of transportation policymaking: the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, which handles transit; the Environment and Public Works Committee, which handles highways; and the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, which handles rail, trucking, motor carrier safety and AVs. None of those committees has introduced legislation yet.
With the midterm elections fast approaching in November, a time when Members of Congress will increasingly want to be home campaigning, and when Democrats may be reluctant to deliver a major legislative achievement to Republicans, especially if they believe they have a chance to win the House — it is increasingly likely that Congress will simply pass an extension of the current authorization before its September 30 expiration.
That extension period could be just a few weeks or months, or something much longer. I’m not sure Kalshi or Polymarket offer a wager on this, but if they did, I’d put my money on an extension long enough that we do not see new transportation legislation until 2027.