Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies:FY2012 Appropriations

David Randall Peterman
Analyst in Transportation Policy

Maggie McCarty
Specialist in Housing Policy

The Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies (THUD) appropriations subcommittee is charged with providing annual appropriations for the Department of Transportation (DOT), Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and related agencies. The HUD budget generally accounts for the largest share of discretionary appropriations provided by the subcommittee. However, when mandatory funding is taken into account, DOT’s budget is larger than HUD’s budget. Mandatory funding typically accounts for a little less than half of the bill total.

The President’s FY2012 budget request for DOT reflected a reauthorization proposal for DOT surface transportation programs. This proposal would have front-loaded a large increase in funding in the first year of the Administration’s proposed six-year surface transportation reauthorization plan, with funding levels for each of the subsequent five years lower than the total for FY2012. The President’s FY2012 budget for HUD requested about a $2.5 billion increase in funding for HUD’s programs and activities, to be partially offset by about a $1.6 billion increase in offsetting collections and receipts.

The House never introduced a formal FY2012 THUD appropriations bill. A draft bill, marked up by the THUD subcommittee, included significantly decreased funding for both HUD and DOT relative to FY2011. The Senate-passed FY2012 THUD appropriations bill provided increased funding for DOT relative to FY2011 but decreased funding for HUD relative to FY2011.

In the final FY2012 THUD appropriations law (Division C of P.L. 112-55, referred to as a “Minibus” because it included appropriations bills from two other subcommittees), Congress provided about $57 billion in discretionary funding for the programs and activities funded under the Transportation, HUD, and Related Agencies subcommittee. This total funding level is an increase over the FY2011 level of $55 billion. DOT received approximately the same level of new funding as it received in FY2011, while net budget authority for HUD decreased by about $3.7 billion from FY2011. The FY2012 DOT budget appears to be larger than it was in FY2011 because the FY2011 appropriations act included over $3 billion in rescissions to offset the DOT budget total, which had the effect of making the total look smaller without reducing the amount of funding available to the agency. DOT also received nearly $2 billion in emergency relief appropriations in FY2012, which counterbalanced a $2 billion reduction in highway funding. Most of the decrease in HUD’s net budget authority is attributable to increases in the amount of offsetting collections available to offset the cost of the HUD budget, although total funding for programs and activities was reduced by about $1 billion.


Date of Report: January 11, 2012
Number of Pages: 25
Order Number: R42149
Price: $29.95

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