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Graphic by Scott Hilling/ENR Art Dept.
As the construction industry seeks to learn more about the incoming Trump administration and congressional Republican tide, Dave Bauer, the American Boulevard & Transportation Builders Association president and CEO, spoke by phone on Nov. 7 with ENR Washington Bureau Chief Tom Ichniowski about what may perchance lie ahead.
As the transition in Washington begins to switch into increased equipment, Bauer suggests some developments to confirm up on in coming days and weeks.
First, says Bauer, ARTBA CEO since 2019, is when the pickle of derive collectively control of the Dwelling shall be resolved. As of Nov. 11, Republicans had been main however some races had no longer but been settled.
Subsequent, he says observers will have to confirm up on how the brand new administration assembles its crew.
“We’re going to seem what the personnel decisions of the brand new administration are,” he says. “And that can provide us our first indication of the build things are going.”
On Nov. 11 Trump named Lee Zeldin, a Republican frail U.S. Dwelling member from Fresh York, to switch the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Zeldin posted the news on social media.
Those selections will have added importance, Bauer says. “There’s a long-standing axiom in Washington that ‘personnel is ‘protection.’”
Bauer says he has no longer viewed indications from the exact-concluded marketing and marketing campaign that Trump has made any modifications in his past strong aid for infrastructure. “It exact didn’t play the position that it did in [the campaign in] 2016,” he says.
Having a admire encourage, Bauer says that for the duration of that 2016 marketing and marketing campaign Trump used to be one of the staunchest advocates for infrastructure spending among the candidates.
Right by technique of his first timeframe, in 2018, Trump proposed a $1.5-trillion infrastructure conception. But that proposal did no longer sure Congress. Even so, Bauer notes that with the dimensions of his conception, Trump “plot the bar for a trillion-greenback infrastructure bill, that everyone—even after he used to be no longer in workplace—mild pursued.”
Having a admire ahead to the brand new Congress, If Republicans enact control the Dwelling, Bauer adds, “It’s going to be a truly narrow majority.”
Furthermore, the Senate’s GOP majority will have fewer than 60 votes, the in general held threshold for making a measure filibuster-proof. That congressional express “is tough in loads of respects,” Bauer says.
A high item on the transportation construction legislative agenda is the impending surface transportation reauthorization bill. The recent measure, which used to be section of the Infrastructure Funding and Jobs Act, is on account of of expire Sept. 30, 2026.
Bauer highlighted one encouraging election pattern connected to the surface transportation bill. He says 15 of the 19 Republicans who, along with Democrats, voted for the final major measure in 2021 shall be returning to the Senate with the brand new Congress.
Tom Ichniowski has been writing about the federal govt as ENR’s Washington Bureau Chief since the George H.W. Bush administration, and he has lined no decrease than five major motorway payments. A known educated on govt protection on infrastructure and regulation, Tom shall be a Baltimore native and Orioles fan who grew up rooting for Brooks and Frank Robinson. He is a graduate of Columbia College and Columbia’s graduate college of journalism, the build he once archaic “unrelentless” in a headline.
