The administration's FY 2013 Presidential Budget Request proposes a $476 billion six-year reauthorization bill. This is much higher authorization level than either the House bill ($260 billion over 5 years) or the Senate bill ($109 billion over two years) would provide.

Here is what we have found so far. Notice that this isn’t all of it. We’ll fill in the details as we find more.

*Please note that our total comes out to $474.9 billion (due to rounding), while actual budget amount is $475.9 billion. The actual budget amount is used in the table.

Pays for it with a “peace dividend”. Roughly $240 billion will be collected in gasoline tax revenues over the next six-years. The Administration would pay for the rest of its reauthorization with annual transfers (approximately $38 billion each year) from the Treasury into the Highway Trust Fund (renamed the Transportation Trust Fund), for a total transfer over six years of $231 billion. To accomplish this, the Administration proposes “utilizing savings from ramping down overseas military operations.”

This is as at least as bad a “pay-for” as both the House (which uses speculative energy development royalties and federal work pension modifications) and Senate (which uses a laundry list of unrelated provisions) proposals. But in the case of the “peace dividend” offset – it is completely fictitious. Because of the drawdown, we never anticipated spending that money so there is no savings to be had. The President’s proposes nothing more than to raid the Treasury to pay for transportation projects. In case anybody has forgotten, we are in the midst of a fiscal nightmare. With annual deficits exceeding $1 trillion and our federal debt over $15 billion, fake budgetary savings or speculative future revenue should NOT be used to pay for infrastructure spending. Period. Throughout the Bush administration the wars were “paid for” off budget (not included in the baseline) which we opposed. The Obama administration moved the war spending on budget, but now wants to keep it in the extended baseline like we were going to maintain the same war spending levels as in FY11 and FY12. This is clearly not the case and so counting on “war savings” to pay for anything is little more than a cynical budget trick.

If Congress or the Administration wants to increase spending on transportation, they should propose a way to increase revenue from the gas tax or some other user-based fee. To do otherwise is budget foolish and will only exacerbate our already difficult situation.

Provides $50 billion in immediate transportation investments, all of which would have a federal cost share of 100%. This would be in addition to the President’s reauthorization proposal (above).

• $28 billion for National Highway Program
• $9 billion for FTA bus and fixed guideway system funding
• $6 billion for Federal Railroad Agency funding, including support for high-speed rail and Amtrak capital expenses
• $4 billion in new TIGER grants
• $3 billion for the FAA for grants-in-aid to airports and facilities and equipment