As the construction industry looks to learn more about the arrival of the Trump administration and the Republican tide in Congress, Dave Bauer, president and CEO of the American Highway and Transportation Builders Association, spoke for phone on Nov. 7 with ENR’s Washington bureau chief, Tom Ichniowski, about what he might be lying about. forward
As the transition in Washington begins to move forward, Bauer suggests some developments to watch for in the coming days and weeks.
First, says Bauer, CEO of ARTBA since 2019, when the issue of party control in the Chamber will be resolved. As of November 11, Republicans were leading but some races were still undecided.
Next, Bauer says observers should watch how the new administration assembles its team.
“We’re going to see what the new administration’s personnel decisions are,” he says. “And that will give us our first indication of where things are going.”
For example, on November 11, Trump nominated Lee Zeldin, a former Republican member of the US House from New York, to head the US Environmental Protection Agency. Zeldin posted the news on social media.
These elections will have added significance, says Bauer. “There is a long-standing axiom in Washington that ‘personnel is ‘politics’.”
Bauer says he hasn’t seen any signs since the campaign just concluded that Trump has made any changes to his past strong support for infrastructure. “He just didn’t play the role he did [the campaign in] 2016”, he says.
Looking back, Bauer says that during that 2016 campaign Trump was one of the strongest advocates of infrastructure spending among the candidates.
During his first term in 2018, Trump proposed a $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan. But this proposal did not clear the Congress. Still, Bauer notes that with the size of his plan, Trump “set the bar for a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill, which everybody, even after he’s no longer in office, is still pursue”.
Looking ahead to the new Congress, if the Republicans control the House, Bauer adds: “It will be a very narrow majority.”
In addition, the Republican majority in the Senate will have less than 60 votes, the generally celebrated threshold to make an obstruction-proof measurement. This image of Congress “is challenging in many ways,” says Bauer.
One of the main items on the transportation construction legislative agenda is the surface transportation reauthorization bill. The current measure, which was part of the Employment and Infrastructure Investments Act, will expire on September 30, 2026.
Bauer highlighted an encouraging electoral development related to the surface transportation bill. He notes that 15 of the 19 Republicans who, along with Democrats, voted for the last major surface transportation measure in 2021 will return to the Senate under the new Congress.
