19. Department of Transportation · Minor · Needs Congress

Consolidate the number of DOT grant programs

Not started

Printed page 622 19. Department of Transportation

“At a bare minimum, the number of grants should be consolidated.”

What has happened

Sep 1, 2026 Not started
No consolidation of DOT's grant programs has been enacted or formally proposed to Congress. DOT opened a request for information on the next surface transportation reauthorization on 2025-07-21, but it solicits ideas rather than proposing a consolidation. The FY2026 Consolidated Appropriations Act funded the existing program structure unchanged, and the FY2027 Budget proposes to add a new Safe and Beautiful Transportation in Washington D.C. program (+$403 million) rather than to reduce the number of programs; the eliminations it does propose (NEVI, RAISE) are defundings of named programs, not a consolidation.
- DOT request for information: Advancing a Surface Transportation Proposal That Focuses on America's Most Fundamental Infrastructure Needs
  Primary Executive branch Jul 21, 2025
- Budget of the U.S. Government, FY2027 — Department of Transportation chapter
  Primary Executive branch Apr 3, 2026

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

Requires Congress; nothing has passed a chamber. §3b’s “progress is measured on this ask” applies to the FY2027 Budget: defunding RAISE and NEVI reduces spending on two programs but does not consolidate the number of grant programs, and the Budget creates a new one.
Checked 2026-09-03 against the FY2026–2030 DOT Strategic Plan (transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2026-03/DOT-Strategic-Plan-FY2026-2030.pdf, read in full). It does not propose consolidating grant programs. Objective 4.1 commits only to “Improving grant award and management processes” and “Streamlining internal processes and consolidating functions” — administrative functions, not grant programs — and the only other use of the word is objective 3.1’s “Consolidating and updating transportation policies and regulations”. Under §3b’s strategic-plan rule that is a general goal in the ask’s subject area that does not name the ask’s object, so not started is confirmed and the plan belongs here.
Shares the p. 621–622 grant-reform block with #1706 (not started) and #1707. The negative search for all three is recorded once in docs/research/ch-19.md under “Cluster negative search — DOT grant reform (pp. 621–623)”.
The off-allowlist report of a 2026-07-27 Duffy letter recommending consolidation of competitive programs (hklaw.com) is a lead, not Evidence; it is the closest thing found to this ask and is the reason to re-check this item after the reauthorization bill is introduced.

Action: eliminate
Object: DOT grant programs
ID: 1708