As construction looks toward a new Trump administration, some in the industry are concerned whether the president-elect will seek to “roll back” or rescind enacted but unspent funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA ) and the reduction of inflation. Act (IRA). Both measures contain massive amounts of infrastructure funding.
There has not even been an attempt to roll back those measures, although in a speech in September Trump warned he would make an unspecified cut to the IRA.
A senior industry official says such a cut to the IIJA would be highly unlikely to happen for a couple of reasons.
Brian Turmail, vice president of public affairs and labor for the Associated General Contractors of America, says, “The only parts of the infrastructure law that could even be ‘recovered’ are the parts that were subject to future appropriations “.
Turmail added in an emailed statement that the program category included about $30 billion for rail projects and $17 billion for transit, “at least those were the amounts when the bill was enacted. It’s likely to be significantly lower now.”
Additionally, he says, “Given the bipartisan levels of support for infrastructure, including rail and transit projects, it’s hard to see the promises of the bipartisan infrastructure bill getting much traction.”
Turmail also says, “Killing construction jobs after an election where the winner was chosen thanks in large part to the votes of people who do construction doesn’t seem very likely.”
He says: “Some [AGC] Members are concerned, but when we explain the political difficulty of getting these funds back, they tend to be less concerned.”
The estimated total funding for the 2021 IIJA legislation is $1.2 trillion. The US Department of Transportation estimated in September that more than $480 billion had been announced so far for more than 60,000 projects under the DOT portion of the legislation.
But Ben Brubeck, vice president of Regulatory, Labor and State Affairs for Associated Builders and Contractors, says about 60 percent of the IIJA’s total funding “hasn’t hit the streets yet.”
And on September 5, President-elect Trump said in a speech in New York City that he would “repeal all unspent funds under the evil called the Inflation Reduction Act.”
But Turmail says: “Getting the IRA funds back would require some kind of repeal of the measure or parts of it. Politically that would be quite difficult given the wide geographical spread of the projects being funded.”
