S. 1647 would extend the authority for the Department of Transportation (DOT) to operate the surface transportation programs administered by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) for six years and would authorize the appropriation of funds for certain other transportation programs. The legislation also would permit participants in a water infrastructure program administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Army Corps of Engineers to issue tax-exempt bonds.
CBO estimates that enacting the bill would increase contract authority (the authority to incur obligations in advance of appropriation acts) relative to CBO’s baseline by $64 billion over the 2016-2025 period. Contract authority is a form of budget authority. S. 1647 would provide $292 billion in contract authority over the 2015-2021 period. (About $14 billion of that amount would be for the remainder of 2015, and is consistent with the rate contained in CBO’s baseline.) Those amounts have traditionally been controlled by provisions in appropriation acts that limit the amount of contract authority that may be obligated. (Those provisions are known as obligation limitations.)
Enacting S. 1647 also would increase direct spending because it would authorize states to spend about $1.9 billion on highways that would otherwise not be spent. In addition, the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimate that enacting provisions of the bill that would affect tax-exempt bond issuances also would reduce revenues by $59 million over the 2016-2025 period. As a result, pay-as-you-go procedures apply.For this estimate, CBO assumes that most spending for highway programs funded from the Highway Trust Fund will continue to be controlled by obligation limitations set in appropriation acts. The bill would authorize obligation limitations totaling $274 billion over the 2016-2021 period. The bill also would authorize the appropriation of about $2 billion for other programs administered by FHWA. Assuming appropriation of the estimated obligation limitations for 2016-2021 and the other amounts specified in the legislation, CBO estimates that implementing the bill would cost $157 billion over the 2016-2020 period, and $256 billion over the 2016-2025 period. Relative to the outlays for highway programs funded by the Highway Trust Fund currently projected in CBO’s baseline, spending for those programs would be about $15 billion higher over the 2016-2025 period under S. 1647.
CBO estimates that enacting the legislation would not increase on-budget deficits or net direct spending by at least $5 billion in at least one of the four consecutive 10 year periods beginning in 2026.
S. 1647 contains no intergovernmental or private-sector mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act.
