19. Department of Transportation · Notable · Needs Congress

Send federal transportation grants to the 50 states to spend as they choose

Not started

Printed page 621 19. Department of Transportation

“If funding must be federal, it would be more efficient for the U.S. Congress to send transportation grants to each of the 50 states and allow each state to purchase the transportation services that it thinks are best.”

What has happened

Sep 1, 2026 Not started
Congress has not block-granted transportation funding to the states, and no bill to do so was found in the 119th Congress. The only in-window administration step toward the next surface transportation bill is a request for information (2025-07-21), which asks stakeholders what the reauthorization should contain — including "strengthening partnerships with States" — rather than proposing that grants be sent to the 50 states to spend as they choose. The FY2027 Budget moves the other way on the same object: it asks Congress for $770 million of Nationally Significant Multimodal Freight & Highway Projects discretionary grants and a $1.3 billion "Big, Beautiful Infrastructure" increase, all of it awarded by the Secretary rather than distributed by formula.
- 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 (discretionary grant increases)
  Primary Executive branch Apr 3, 2026

Research log

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

Research notes

Requires Congress. Under the §3b ladder, no bill has been introduced, let alone passed a chamber, so the ask sits at not started. The reauthorization RFI is an administration step toward a bill, but an RFI is not a formal administration request for this ask — it asks the public what the bill should say.
Read together with #1706 (abolish DOT’s discretionary grant-making, not started) and #1708 (consolidate the number of grant programs) on the same p. 621–622 block. All three turn on the same instrument — the surface transportation reauthorization due when the current authorization expires on 2026-09-30 — and none of them has one.
A 2026-07-27 letter from Secretary Duffy recommending that competitive programs be consolidated is reported only on an off-allowlist law-firm page (hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2026/07/dot-secretary-duffy-reiterates-surface-transportation-reauthorization), already recorded as a lead in docs/research/ch-19.md under #1706. Consolidation is not block-granting, so it would not move this item even if it were sourced.
transportation.gov refuses curl with a browser User-Agent and WebFetch alike (403), so DOT’s own reauthorization briefing-room pages could not be read; a row is in the read queue.

Action: transfer
Object: Federal transportation grants to the states
ID: 1707