The White House officially unveiled its $3.8 trillion budget
for the fiscal year 2011 this morning, seeking $1 billion to continue
its high-speed rail investment and $530 million for the transportation
leg of the Obama administration's inter-agency push to promote sustainable planning on the local level.
White House budget chief Peter Orszag challenged employees to boost their walking last fall. (Photo: CSM)The budget also proposes a $4 billion National Infrastructure Innovation and Finance Fund, a rechristened National Infrastructure Bank that would use federal money to leverage private capital for large-scale projects improving the nation's built environment.
The $530 million request for the three-agency sustainable communities partnership, which got $150 million
from Congress for the current fiscal year, would go directly to the
U.S. DOT for "comprehensive regional and community planning efforts
that
integrate transportation, housing, and other critical investments,"
according to the White House budget office.
The
administration requested $160 million in total for the two other
agencies involved in the partnership, the Environmental Protection
Agency and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
As promised to Congress in December,
the White House also set aside funding for the implementation of its
plans for a new federal role overseeing rail transit safety. The U.S.
DOT would receive $30 million in today's budget to train new inspectors
and help cities such as Washington D.C. come into compliance with
minimum safety standards.
On the controversial question of
the cash-strapped highway trust fund -- which is expected to run out of
money this spring, not long after the expiration of the latest
short-term extension to the 2005 federal transportation law -- the
presidential budget maintains its insistence on waiting until 2011 to fix the nation's transport funding crisis.
In the budget's U.S. DOT section, the White House writes:
Thecurrent framework for financing and allocating surface transportationinvestments is not financially sustainable, nor does it effectivelyallocate resources to meet our critical national needs. TheAdministration recommends extending the current [federal bill] throughMarch 2011, during which time it will work with the Congress to reformsurface transportation programs and put the system on a viablefinancing path. ...
[T]he Administration seeks to integrateeconomic analysis and performance measurement in transportationplanning to ensure that taxpayer dollars are better targeted and spent.
In
a separate section of the budget dedicated to long-term fiscal
analysis, the White House describes its $43 billion estimate for
highway spending in 2011 as a placeholder, not intended to reflect the
funding strategy "that the Administration and Congress necessarily
should or will adopt for the long-term reauthorization" legislation.
"Rather,"
the budget adds, "its purpose is to accurately reflect the condition of
the [highway trust fund] and recognize that, under current law,
maintaining baseline spending" on highways will require more transfers
of cash from the general Treasury.
