On March 15, 2017, President Trump announced a draft proposal for the federal Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 budget, a big-picture version being nick-named the "Skinny Budget". A full budget proposal is expected from the Trump Administration in late April or early May. As always, the President's draft budget proposal represents the starting point for discussion and negotiations with Congress. The annual budget only becomes law after approval from both houses of Congress and approval from the President. The next step over the coming months will be appropriations committees in both houses of Congress determining funding levels for all federal programs, followed by votes by the full House and Senate.  

Although FY 2017 is nearly half over, the federal government is still generally operating under a Continuing Resolution (CR), that funds the various agencies and programs at FY 2016 funding levels. The FY 2018 proposal includes $16.2 billion for the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) discretionary budget, a $2.4 billion (or 13%) decrease from the 2017 CR level. The Administration’s budget outline does not include details about the President’s $1 trillion infrastructure proposal, but Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney has indicated such a proposal would likely be included in the full budget proposal.

The Skinny Budget proposal targets three transportation funding items for reduction or elimination:

• Federal Transit Administration (FTA) Section 5309 Capital Investment Grant/New Starts program: no new Full Funding Grant Agreements would be approved. This includes the Small Starts program, which TAMC has long hoped would fund the Monterey Branch Line project, and MST had hoped would fund its Highway 1 bus on shoulder/bus on branch line project.
• The highly competitive TIGER grant program; TAMC applied for TIGER funding several times to no avail and staff has considered a new application for the Pajaro/Watsonville station if the grant program is still available.
• Elimination of funding to support Amtrak's long-distance routes, which includes the Coast Starlight. When combined with the elimination of the Essential Air Service program, which provides subsidies to the Monterey Regional Airport, the proposal would be a dramatic reduction of intercity travel options for Monterey County. Recalling recent history, nearly every budget proposed by President George W. Bush identified both programs for elimination, which were nonetheless maintained by Congress.

It is hard to determine any big-picture direction until the full budget proposal is released next month. Most concerning is this statement in the proposal in regards to New Starts: "future investments in new transit projects would be funded by localities that use them and benefit from these localized projects." At the same time, more controversial transit investments were included - such as maintained funds for the embattled Washington, D.C., Metro network - and there was no reduction in support for FTA administrative operations.  

Meanwhile, the proposal indicates the Administration's overarching objective of reducing regulatory burdens, which could free up administrative resources spent on regulatory procedure, and federal regulatory streamlining has long been a priority for TAMC.