The House and Senate Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies (THUD) appropriations subcommittees are charged with providing annual appropriations for the Department of Transportation (DOT), Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and related agencies. The HUD budget generally accounts for the largest share of discretionary appropriations provided by the subcommittee. However, when mandatory funding is taken into account, DOT’s budget is larger than HUD’s budget, because it includes funding from transportation trust funds. The House and the Senate have considered FY2014 funding with significantly different assumed levels of total funding. Following from this, the House and Senate THUD bills were allocated very different levels of discretionary funding for FY2014: $44.1 billion in the House, and $54.0 billion in the Senate, a difference of 23%. Comparing funding levels proposed for FY2014 with the amounts provided in FY2013 is complex. In FY2013, Congress funded THUD agencies through a full-year continuing resolution, which provided funding generally at the same level as in FY2012, with some exceptions, and which included a 0.2% across-the-board rescission. That funding was subsequently reduced by the imposition of a sequester, which cut discretionary funding levels by around 5%. This reduced THUD funding by roughly $4.6 billion: around $1.6 billion from DOT and $3 billion from HUD. The Administration requested $76.9 billion for DOT for FY2014. Congress enacted $71.3 billion for DOT in FY2013; after the sequester reduction, DOT received around $70.6 billion. The biggest change in the Administration’s request from current funding was a proposal to restructure the Federal Railroad Administration, creating two new programs that would support existing passenger rail service and fund improvements to rail infrastructure. The Administration requested $6.4 billion for those new programs, an increase of roughly $5 billion over the amount currently provided for those purposes. Neither the House nor Senate bills supported that proposal. The President’s FY2014 budget request for HUD included nearly $35 billion in net new budget authority. This amount is an increase over FY2013, as Congress enacted $33.4 billion for HUD in FY2013, pre-sequester and pre-rescission. Accounting for sequestration and the across-the-board rescission, HUD was provided with about $31.4 billion in FY2013. The House bill (H.R. 2610) proposed about $28 billion in net new budget authority, while the Senate bill (S. 1243) proposed about $35 billion. Congress did not enact any final FY2014 appropriations prior to the start of the fiscal year on October 1, 2013, resulting in a funding lapse and partial government shutdown that lasted until a short-term continuing resolution was enacted on October 17, 2013. Under the terms of that CR (P.L. 113-46), federal departments and agencies, including those typically funded by the THUD appropriations bill, are funded at their FY2013 levels, post-rescission and post-sequestration, back-dated from October 1, 2013, through January 15, 2014. The CR contained several THUD-related anomalies.
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