This article is part of our President’s FY2025 Budget Request Coverage. Visit our Rolling Analysis Page for more.

President Biden’s budget request seeks more than $7.2 billion for the Civil Works portion of the Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that is in charge of constructing projects facilitating commercial navigation, flood and storm damage reduction, as well as environmental restoration on most of our nation’s major, and not-so-major, waterways. The budget, however, undersells the amount of future spending Congress will ultimately direct toward U.S. waterways, ports, and flood control projects.

At $7.220 billion, the request is a nearly three percent reduction from the $7.413 billion the president requested in his FY2024 budget. If enacted it would be a nearly 17 percent reduction from the $8.675 billion Congress appropriated for Civil Works projects in the 2024 Minibus enacted last week. This reduction, however, is a mirage.

While Washington in the past few years has seen a break from many budgetary and political norms, there is one tradition that has held steadfast – the Corps of Engineers Budgetary Kabuki dance. Every year the White House, regardless of which party is in control, lowballs funding levels enabling the administration to budget that cash for other priorities. Congress, again regardless of party control, makes a theatric show of disapproval. When it comes time to actually produce the spending bills, Congress bumps the spending up and the president signs the bill. Glad handing and back slapping ensue. It’s a well-worn ritual undertaken by every administration and Congress in our 29-year existence.

Through Fiscal Year 2020 the gulf between what previous administrations (both Obama and Trump) requested and Congress ultimately approved grew exponentially. In the FY2020 Omnibus, Congress appropriated nearly $3 billion (58.5%) more than the president had requested. This dropped to, umm, “only” a $1.8 billion (30%) difference in the final year of the Trump presidency.

The Biden Administration continues this ritual.  In the end, with a Congress that always spends more on Corps of Engineers projects than the president requests, inflation driving up costs, and a continued push for increased infrastructure spending, you can bank on another episode of this fiscally irresponsible theater.