Fiscal year 2017 is more than half over and Congress has finally passed a spending bill for the year. This has led to endless debates over whether Trump won, the Democrats won, or anybody won. However, Trump proposed a “budget blueprint” for fiscal year 2018 that said little about 2017, while this spending bill is for 2017, so it would be premature to say that Trump won or lost.
Among other things, the budget blueprint called for halting funding to transit capital projects (“New Starts”) other than projects that have already received full-funding grant agreements (or, in the case of small starts, small starts grant agreements). In other words, any project on this list that is not marked “FFGA” or “SSGA” in the fourth column would not be funded under Trump’s budget. Continue reading
