By Harlee Hewitt, Associate Editor
The U.S. Congress passed a stopgap funding bill late on Saturday with overwhelming Democratic support after Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy backed down from an earlier demand for a partisan bill.
The Democratic-majority Senate voted 88-9 to pass the measure to avoid a federal government shutdown sending the bill to President Joe Biden, who signed it into law before the 12:01 a.m. EST deadline.
The House voted 335-91 to fund the government through Nov. 17. That gives Congress 46 days to find a way to avoid partial government shutdown, which would delay roads and bridges construction projects and potentially cause a lot of economic pain throughout the country.
McCarthy’s move marked a profound shift from earlier in the week when a shutdown looked all but inevitable. Federal agencies had already drawn up detailed plans on what services and funding would continue, such as airport operations, and what would shut down, including nutrition aid for millions.
According to a memo published by the ARTBA, every year Congress must enact 12 separate annual appropriations bills to fund federal agencies and programs from agriculture to transportation. All 12 of those bills must be passed by the Republican controlled House by Nov. 17 to avoid the possibility of a shutdown.
If a shutdown does occur in the coming months, there is also the possibility for the roads and bridges construction industry to see a slew of impacts.
Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg held a press conference last week to lay out the possible impacts of a government shutdown “so that there’s no confusion about what’s at stake for transportation, for working families, and for all Americans.”
“This summer, President Biden and Speaker McCarthy shook hands and made a bipartisan deal to keep this country running. Two-thirds of House Republicans voted for that deal. I should note that deal was tough for all sides, frankly, it was tough for this department because it meant cutting back on funding for good infrastructure projects that we believe in for fixing roads and bridges and airports, but we accepted it because that was the deal.”
Buttigieg also spoke to the untimeliness of the shutdown, given the many infrastructure and transportation programs that have recently been funded that could potentially see delays upon other long-term effects.
“There is no good time for a government shutdown, but this is a particularly bad time for a government shutdown, especially when it comes to transportation. The consequences would be disruptive and dangerous and so would the long-term consequences of paying the ransom to avoid it in the form of cuts to safety, infrastructure, and other priorities.”
According to a release from the White House, a shutdown could “delay major infrastructure projects across the country due to a delay in EPA and DOI environmental reviews, which would affect multiple federal agency projects.”
Other safety precautions could also take a back seat according to the White House. “The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) would be forced to limit workplace inspections, denying workers a key protection against safety risk.”
In addition, the release said permitting could be disrupted. “No USDA loans or grants would be made for modernizing utilities infrastructure in rural America, including permitting actions for rural electric transmission and broadband projects.”
While the Biden administration has yet to release many specifics of how a shutdown would be administered, the ARTBA released guidance on how funding for highway and public transportation programs would most likely move forward during a shutdown.
According to the ARTBA’s memo, the federal highway program and Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) employees are supported by the Highway Trust Fund (HTF) and advanced appropriations included in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), not the General Fund (GF), like most other federal programs.
The IIJA authorized trust fund expenditures for FY 2022 through FY 2026 and ensured the fund has sufficient resources to support these investments. As a result, the federal highway programs and the FHWA would continue to operate without an appropriations bill.
Only projects funded by appropriations but not funded under HTF could potentially see delays, according to Senior Vice President of Congressional Relations at ARTBA, Dean Franks.
This also means that workers employed under the Federal Highway Program and employees of the FHWA would not be furloughed during the shutdown, Franks said. These workers would be paid and most likely continue to work full-time.
Similarly, nearly all federal transit programs authorized by the IIJA law are either funded by the HTF or advanced appropriations included in the IIJA. However, the Capital Investment Grant program, the main, federally supported, transit construction program, does receive most of its resources from the GF. Impact on construction projects funded through this program would be up to local transit and rail agencies, which may either stop work or elect to use their own resources to pay contractors until an agreement is reached.
Before 1976, the U.S. had never seen a government shutdown. Since then, there have been 10 shutdowns, three of which occurred within the last decade. In that time, there also have been 11 federal funding gaps, which threatened shutdowns.
At 34 days, the longest government shutdown was also the most recent, from late 2018 to early 2019 during former President Donald Trump’s administration.
During the 2018 shutdown, transportation construction work across the nation was put on hold, with state transportation officials withholding approvals for 2019 projects until federal funding was guaranteed.
The government had been running on a continuing resolution which ran out Dec. 21, cutting off the availability of transportation funding to state governments. This means only a quarter of the $44 billion for highway and $11 billion for transit was paid at the beginning of the FY.
In one example of how construction projects were affected, Oklahoma halted accepting bids for about $137 million in federally funded projects as the shutdown continued. Bidding on $102 million in projects supported by federal funding was canceled in January that year, while another $36 million scheduled for February was left vulnerable. RB
