Dive Brief:

• The Appropriations Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives has voted 28-21 to send the full chamber an appropriations bill for fiscal year 2015 that includes the Department of Transportation, which is good news for the Highway Trust Fund.
• The committee action, however, says nothing about when the legislation might go to the full House, its likely fate there or whether it is a bill President Obama will likely sign in the fight-over-everything atmosphere of Washington.
• The trust fund, which in some states accounts for well more than half of the construction work that goes to contractors, will be unable to funds any new projects by the end of this fiscal year, Sept. 30, and, by many accounts, earlier than that.

Dive Insight:

The total bill includes the Department of Housing and Urban Development and totals $52 billion, and it would flat-fund federal aid to highways at $40.3 billion. The appropriations measure has some significant increases in it for other accounts, including going from $100 million to $600 million for TIGER grants to local projects and going from $850 million to $1.05 billion for Amtrak. Still to be addressed in the process is the reauthorization of the MAP-21 law.