The BUILD America 250 Act: What Congress gets right and wrong in its new transportation bill

On May 22, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved the BUILD America 250 Act, marking the first major milestone in the process to reauthorize the federal surface transportation program. The bill text now offers the public—and members of Congress not on the committee—a window into how committee members imagine the federal government can best support planning and investment in the country’s roads, rails, and trails.

There are obvious reasons to be skeptical of whether this Congress can pass a final version of the legislation before a new Congress is sworn in. Some House Republicans have red lines on federal spending, Senate schedules are packed and difficult to coordinate across four relevant committees, the filibuster is in play, and fast-approaching midterm elections apply specific pressures. But even if the bill doesn’t become law now, the work that went into designing the BUILD Act’s programs could give its proposals serious momentum, similar to how the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee bill released in 2019 heavily informed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) of 2021.

Like any 1,000-page legislation, the BUILD Act has far too many components for us to describe every detail here. Instead, what follows are high-level reactions, thoughts on specific programs, and some areas where the bill could improve.

What would the BUILD Act mean for America?

Since the Interstate Highway System was effectively completed and the modern surface transportation era began in 1991, Congress has steadily added new components to formula grant programs—which always dominate total spending—to address specific national needs. For example, the FAST Act added a freight program and IIJA added multiple environmental programs. This is a key responsibility of the federal government: to recognize structural challenges facing the whole country and use the power of the purse to incentivize state and local responses.

The BUILD Act would begin to reverse that approach. The bill effectively pairs a reduced congressional vision with greater state autonomy. States receive a larger share of total funding via highway formula programs, and the dollars are made more flexible by expanding qualified expenses and transferability between programs.

Increasing flexibility and putting more overall funding into the Surface Transportation Block Grant and National Highway Performance programs—especially for resilience and digital technologies—should lead to greater variation among how states build and operate their transportation systems. Such experimentation is a foundational asset of American governance. By shifting significant responsibilities to states, the BUILD Act may actually reveal which state policies most effectively grow the industrial base, drive down household costs, and protect residents’ safety.

The lack of forward-looking vision, however, becomes clearer by looking at what the BUILD Act cuts. The bill would reduce relative spending on transit, eliminate guaranteed funding for passenger rail, disincentivize the transition to electric vehicles, and generally commit fewer resources to consumer choice. It cuts formula programs focused on environmental resilience and reduced pollution. The bill also fails to add crucial accountability measures for how states monitor network quality and choose capital investments. Combined, these choices do too little to address affordability and safety concerns while ceding ground to our global competitors.

Where the BUILD Act does innovate is around procedural reforms. Among those are accelerated project delivery, streamlined competitive grantmaking, and the beginning of a new approach to direct local and regional receipt of funds.

All this amounts to a bill that’s difficult to pigeonhole. What’s certain is that if the BUILD Act becomes law, it will be remembered as a significant pullback in congressional vision in exchange for greater flexibility in how states can spend transportation funds.

What the BUILD Act gets right

Transportation and Infrastructure Committee members crafted a bill with plenty of reforms, large and small. But the three listed below would most obviously improve how the federal government operates its surface transportation program.

• The formula program to invest in bridges is an ingenious way to both improve critical infrastructure and test innovative delivery methods. The most important component is the 25% set aside—worth roughly $2.3 billion per year—that will flow to localities. This component will finally let policymakers see how efficiently localities can obligate federal funds—a capability Brookings already confirmed when assessing how localities spent American Rescue Plan Act dollars. This program’s success could have a transformative impact on future surface bills.
• The BUILD Act includes multiple sensible permitting reforms, particularly for new ways to qualify for categorical exclusions under the National Environmental Policy Act. A categorical exclusion would now be granted when a project’s federal funding doesn’t exceed $12 million or total project costs don’t exceed $70 million. This adjustment should accelerate project delivery and lower compliance costs—a major boon for localities. Plus, adding transit-oriented development as a categorical exclusion when financed under the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act will further streamline project development and lower costs.
• A new, hyperflexible competitive grant program—Surface Transportation Accelerator Grants, or STAG—maintains the benefits of directly applying for federal funding while lessening the administrative burden on both applicants and federal administrators. STAG effectively consolidates multiple competitive grant programs under one roof, mandating certain shares of all awards flow to urban, rural, and regional recipients.

How the BUILD Act can be improved

The BUILD Act contains multiple concerning elements. On one hand, some of its policy reforms are unlikely to improve system performance. On the other, the bill fails to address multiple failures within current law. Examples include:

• The bill would overcharge electric vehicle owners by mandating a $130 annual registration fee. Drivers of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles should pay user fees, both because they don’t currently pay directly into the Highway Trust Fund and the federal government needs a fiscal instrument as internal combustion engines continue their phase-out. Yet $130 is higher than what internal combustion engine vehicle owners typically pay each year in gas taxes. Why would Congress want to disincentivize a product that’s more technologically advanced, offers lower lifetime costs, reduces exposure to globally volatile oil markets, and reduces tailpipe emissions?
• The bill doesn’t improve accountability for how states plan and select federally funded capital projects. Our research has found that it’s difficult to follow the effect of federally required long-range transportation plans and performance measures on project lists. Ideally, states would include implementation elements in long-range transportation plans (so the public can track progress) and publish explanations of their project selections (so the public can understand the state’s rationale for picking each project). Tracking asset quality via their asset management plans should also inform investment. The BUILD Act doesn’t address any of these gaps, although its request that the Government Accountability Office study suballocation methods will be closely watched.
• The bill reduces the country’s capacity to protect against rising environmental damage. One of the IIJA’s hallmark elements was new planning and spending on protecting transportation assets from extreme weather and environmental impacts, as well as reducing pollution from the transportation sector. The BUILD Act would strike nearly all those programs from law and zero-out funding for those it preserves. Adding flexibilities within the Emergency Relief or Surface Transportation Block Grant programs doesn’t begin to compensate for the cuts. These cuts read less like one side of a philosophical debate and more as ignorance to scientific and market realities such as rising insurance rates and the cost of extreme weather events.
• The bill doesn’t address safety needs. It would cut Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) five-year funding from $5 billion in the IIJA to $3.75 billion. A disproportionate number of transportation-related injuries and deaths happen inside communities—not on limited-access highways—and to pedestrians. SS4A is a well-regarded and easily implemented program. These cuts will make it harder to improve U.S. roadway safety, which is getting worse than our global peers.
• The bill shifts passenger rail funding to annual appropriations. The IIJA used a tool called “advanced appropriations” to provide guaranteed funding for all five years, putting rail on more even footing with highway and transit programs. Yet even as Amtrak breaks its own ridership records and states continue investing, the BUILD Act only authorizes spending. Said more colloquially, the bill offers zero guaranteed funding for passenger rail.
• The bill also eliminates advance appropriations for certain transit programs. The BUILD Act does continue to fund transit formula programs, now equal to $87.6 billion over five years. Yet this is a net decrease from the IIJA’s guaranteed funding due to the loss of advanced appropriations.

Will the BUILD Act become law?

While the House Committee’s writing work is mostly done, this process is just getting started. Committee leadership will need to whip their colleagues to support the bill, starting with leadership of the Rules Committee and Way and Means Committee, whose members must approve and fund the bill’s components. And even if the BUILD Act passes the House, the Senate will need to pass their own version very quickly for a final bill to hit the president’s desk before the IIJA’s September 30 expiration.

Considering the political calendar, it’s far more likely that the IIJA—including supplemental transfers from the general fund—gets extended, and the next Congress and its leadership will be the ones to pass comprehensive reauthorization.

But that doesn’t mean progress should stop. This Congress should use its remaining months to make the BUILD Act even better. Marginal reforms such as greater state accountability, lower electric vehicle fees, and more funding for safety could easily improve the bill. But we believe Congress should be even bolder. The more Congress leads on issues related to household affordability, environmental resilience, and industrial competitiveness, the more states, localities, and private industry will follow. Every surface transportation reauthorization is an opportunity to demonstrate such leadership.