DOT Budget Focuses on Safety and Supply Chain

In their budget for the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), the Biden Administration has slated safety and solutions to the nation’s supply chain issues as top priorities.

The DOT budget looks to improve safety on U.S. roads while improving connectivity in the nation’s supply chain. Other priorities include climate change, environmental justice, and the adoption of emerging technologies.

“The budget reflects our values as a nation—a nation of good people, growing in a new age of possibilities and standing as a beacon to the world. Together, let us put those values into practice and prove that democracy delivers as we keep building a stronger, fairer economy that leaves no one behind,” said Biden in a prepared statement.

The DOT requests are part of the larger $6.9 trillion budget which was sent to Congress in early March. With a divided Congress, it’s unlikely Biden will get everything he wants.

To improve safety, the DOT budget has more than $1.3 billion earmarked for the National Highway Safety Administration. This money is in response to rising highway fatalities in the nation. In 2021 there were nearly 43,000 road accident-related deaths.

To help improve the nation’s supply chain the budget provides $230 million for the Port Infrastructure Development Program. The request for port connectivity improvements would be in addition to funding that was already agreed on in the 2021’s $1.2 Bipartisan Infrastructure Act.

Other proposals include $14 billion in transit operations grants, $1.5 Billion for rail safety—a hot issue after the recent train derailment in Ohio—and $1.2 billion for other infrastructure projects.

The Biden DOT budget would increase funding for transportation programs by $27.8 billion in discretionary authority and $80.3 billion in contract authority and obligation limitations.

“This year’s budget comes at a critical moment for our country and a time when the president’s economic strategy is working,” Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young said in a press release. “The economy has added 12 million jobs. The unemployment rate has fallen to the lowest level in more than 50 years. And we just had the two strongest years for new small-business applications on record.”

Republicans who control the House of Representatives had a different message about the budget proposal. In a statement shortly after the budget was released, Republican leaders were quick to criticize the budget as “reckless and doubling down on the same far-left spending policies that have led to record inflation and our current debt crisis.”

Republicans in the Senate also criticized the president’s budget. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) said the proposal “reveals how out of touch Biden is with families in Wyoming and across the country. This president wants to raise taxes on hardworking families so he can fund his reckless, radical spending.”