The Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies (THUD) appropriations subcommittees are charged with drafting bills to provide annual appropriations for the Department of Transportation (DOT), Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and related agencies. Typically, these bills are reported out by the appropriations committees and passed by the House and Senate, which then produce a conference agreement. Title I of the annual THUD appropriations bill funds the Department of Transportation. DOT is primarily a grant-making and regulatory organization. Its programs are organized roughly by mode, providing grants to state and local government agencies to support the construction of highways, transit, and intercity passenger rail infrastructure, while providing regulatory oversight to promote safety for the rail, transit, commercial trucking and intercity bus, and maritime industries. The exception is aviation; the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) not only administers grants for airport development and regulates the safety of aviation operations, but also operates the U.S. air traffic control system. It accounts for the majority of the employees of DOT. Title II of the annual THUD appropriations bill funds the Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD's programs are primarily designed to address housing problems faced by households with very low incomes or other special housing needs. These include several programs of rental assistance for persons who are poor, elderly, and/or have disabilities. Three rental assistance programs—Public Housing, Section 8 Vouchers, and Section 8 project-based rental assistance—account for the majority of the department's nonemergency funding. Two flexible block grant programs—HOME and Community Development Block Grants (CDBG)—help communities finance a variety of housing and community development activities designed to serve low-income families. Other, more specialized grant programs help communities meet the needs of homeless persons, including those with AIDS. HUD's Federal Housing Administration (FHA) insures mortgages made by lenders to home buyers with low downpayments and to developers of multifamily rental buildings containing relatively affordable units. Title III of the THUD appropriations bill funds a collection of related agencies. The agencies under the jurisdiction of the subcommittees are a mix of transportation-related agencies and housing and community development-related agencies. They include the Access Board, the Federal Maritime Commission, the National Transportation Safety Board, the Amtrak Office of Inspector General (IG), the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation (often referred to as NeighborWorks), the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, and the costs associated with the government conservatorship of the housing-related government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. For more about the composition of the THUD funding bill, see Appendix B . Table 1 provides a timeline of legislative action on the FY2014 THUD appropriations bill, and Table 2 lists the total funding provided for each of the titles in the bill for FY2013 and the amount requested for that title for FY2014. As is discussed in the next section, much of the funding for this bill is in the form of contract authority, a type of mandatory budget authority. Thus, the discretionary funding provided in the bill (often referred to as the bill's 302(b) allocation) is only around half of the total funding provided by this bill. For more information about the composition of THUD funding, see Appendix B . The congressional appropriations process for FY2013 funding for THUD (and other federal agencies) was unusually complex. Funding for the first half of FY2013 was provided through a continuing resolution at roughly the same level as in FY2012. Midway through the year Congress passed P.L. 113-6 , a consolidated appropriations act; this bill included several appropriations acts and a continuing resolution providing funding for the remaining federal agencies and departments (including all those typically funded by the THUD appropriations bill) for the rest of FY2013. This act generally funded THUD agencies at their FY2012 levels, with several exceptions (anomalies). It also included a 0.2% across-the-board rescission to the funding provided to federal agencies in the bill. However, final FY2013 funding was further reduced by an across-the-board reduction, or sequestration, required by the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA, P.L. 112-25 ), as amended by the American Taxpayer Relief Act (ATRA, P.L. 112-240 ). When Congress failed to take action to reduce future deficits as required by the BCA, automatic cuts required by that act went into effect. On March 1, 2013, President Obama ordered the BCA-mandated sequestration. It required a 7.8% reduction in non-exempt defense discretionary funding, a 5.0% reduction in non-exempt nondefense discretionary funding, a 5.1% reduction for most non-exempt nondefense mandatory funding, and a 7.9% reduction for non-exempt defense mandatory funding. These percentages were then applied to the funding levels in place at the time (the six-month CR) in order to calculate dollar amount reductions for each non-exempt program, project, or activity. Around two-thirds of total DOT spending comes from the highway trust fund and is exempt from sequestration under Section 255 of P.L. 99-177 as amended, so the overall reduction in DOT funding was closer to 2%. According to a report accompanying the order, funding for DOT's programs and activities for FY2013 was reduced by about $1.6 billion as a result of the sequester. The largest DOT programs subject to the cuts were the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Transit Administration's New Starts Program (which provides funding to local governments for new subway and light rail transit lines), and the Federal Railroad Administration's grants to Amtrak. Because the cuts to FAA's funding could have led to disruptions in air travel due to furloughs of air traffic controllers, Congress enacted P.L. 113-9 in April 2013 to allow the DOT to transfer funding from other accounts to avoid controller furloughs. Nearly all of HUD's budget is non-exempt nondefense discretionary funding, and was thus subject to a 5.1% reduction in funding under the sequestration order. In total, funding for HUD's programs and activities for FY2013 was reduced by about $3 billion as a result of sequestration. The President's FY2014 budget requested $76.9 billion in new budget resources for DOT. The requested funding was $5.6 billion more than the amount enacted for FY2013 (not counting $13.7 billion in FY2013 emergency funding). The biggest change in the FY2014 request was a request for an additional $5 billion for passenger rail facilities. Both the House and Senate bills declined to support that request. The Senate bill proposed $73.0 billion, $1.7 billion (2%) more than the enacted FY2013 amount. The House bill proposed $70.3 billion, $1.4 billion (2%) less than the enacted FY2013 amount, and $2.75 billion less than the Senate bill. The major differences between the House and Senate bills are that the House bill proposed to zero out the Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant program (and rescind $237 million of FY2013 funding for that program), would have provided roughly $800 million less for the Federal Aviation Administration's Operations and Facilities & Equipment accounts, would have provided $500 million less for bridge repairs funded by the Federal Highway Administration, would have provided roughly $500 million less for Amtrak and $100 million less for passenger rail grants, and would have provided roughly $350 million less for Federal Transit Administration programs. The President's FY2014 budget requested nearly $35 billion in net new budget authority for HUD in FY2014. Congress enacted $33.4 billion for HUD in FY2013, pre-sequester, or $31.4 billion post-sequester. The House bill ( H.R. 2610 ) would have provided $28 billion in net new budget authority, while the Senate bill ( S. 1243 ) would have provided just over $35 billion. In addition to requiring the sequestration discussed earlier in this report, the BCA, as amended by ATRA, also established discretionary spending limits for FY2012-FY2021. Through FY2014, separate caps are established for defense and nondefense spending. If the caps are violated, another sequestration would be ordered in order to bring spending within the caps. For FY2014, both the House and Senate appropriations bills, if enacted, would violate the spending caps and trigger a sequestration. In the House, the overall spending total is in line with the overall BCA cap, but the House's division of spending between defense and non-defense accounts violates the BCA terms, with the defense portion of the budget exceeding its cap. In the Senate, the overall budget total exceeds the overall BCA cap. If either were to become law, without other changes, a budget enforcement sequestration would likely take place. In the case of the House level, the sequestration would only affect defense spending; in the case of the Senate level, both defense and non-defense spending would be affected. Table 3 shows funding trends for DOT and HUD over the period FY2008-FY2013, omitting emergency funding and other supplemental funding, and the amounts requested for FY2014. The purpose of Table 3 is to indicate trends in regular funding for these agencies, which is why emergency supplemental appropriations are not included in the figures. Table 4 presents a selected account-by-account summary of FY2014 appropriations for DOT, compared to FY2013. Overall, the FY2014 request totaled $76.9 billion in new budget resources for DOT.