On September 5, Department of Transportation (DOT) Secretary Mary Peters announced that the Highway Trust Fund faced a shortfall as soon as October 2008, due to lower than expected revenues in 2008, and called on Congress to immediately pass legislation transferring general fund revenues to the Trust Fund, a step that the Administration had previously opposed. On July 10, the Senate Committee on Appropriations approved S. 3261 , the FY2009 THUD appropriations bill, and ordered it to be reported. The committee recommended $109.4 billion in funding, $6.6 billion more than the amount requested by the Administration. On June 20, 2008, the House Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Transportation HUD (THUD) marked up an unnumbered draft FY2009 THUD appropriations bill. The date of a full committee markup is unknown, and no bill has yet been reported. According to the subcommittee's press release, the bill would increase funding for a number of housing and transportation programs over the President's request, including the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, housing for the elderly and disabled, public housing (including HOPE VI), Amtrak, the Federal Transit Administration, and grants to airports. On February 5, 2008, the Administration submitted its budget request for FY2009 to Congress. The budget request for both DOT and HUD represented a reduction in funding compared to the non-emergency funding enacted for those agencies in FY2008. Congress faces a difficult challenge in the FY2009 appropriations process. The nation is facing a variety of economic challenges—including a general slowdown in the economy, record high oil prices, and a decline in housing values. The budget deficit for FY2008 is expected to be around $400 billion. The President presented a constrained budget to Congress—the THUD request represented no net increase over the FY2008 level (excluding FY2008 emergency appropriations)—and threatened to veto any appropriations bills that exceed the requested level of funding. Citing last year's appropriations experience, when some in Congress contended that the President refused to negotiate with Congress over the final level of FY2008 appropriations, congressional leaders have been cited in press reports indicating that Congress may not pass many—if any—regular appropriations bills before the end of the 2008 calendar year. Instead, reports indicate that Congress will pass one or more continuing resolutions to keep the government operating after the end of FY2008, and complete the FY2009 appropriations process in calendar year 2009, when it will be dealing with a new Administration. The President's net FY2009 request for the programs covered by this appropriations bill is $102.5 billion (after scorekeeping adjustments). This is $36 million (less than 1%) below the comparable total enacted for FY2008. The DOT request was $63.5 billion, $1.2 billion (2%) below the amount provided for FY2008. It provided a 7% increase for transit funding ($644 million), though that is less than the authorized funding level. The President's FY2009 Budget requests $39.1 billion, a less than 4% increase in total, regular (non-emergency) budget authority for HUD. Following recent trends, the requested increase in budget authority is largely driven by declines in the amount available for rescission (88% decline from FY2008) and projected to be available in offsetting receipts (23% decline from FY2008). The FY2009 request for regular (non-emergency) appropriations—which is the amount available for HUD's programs and activities—represents a slight decline (1.4%) from FY2008. The Administration's FY2009 budget request included funding reductions that had also been proposed by the Administration in previous budget requests, without success. Among the programs proposed for reductions or elimination were DOT highway funding (-$1.8 billion), airport grants (-$764 million), Amtrak (-$525 million), and subsidies for air service to small communities (-$60 million) programs; HUD's Community Development Fund (-$866 million), Housing for the Elderly (-$195 million), and Housing for the Disabled (-$77 million) programs; and HUD's HOPE VI, Rural Housing and Economic Development, Brownfields Redevelopment, and Section 108 Loan Guarantees programs, for which no funding was requested (-$132 million total). Table 1 notes the status of the FY2009 THUD appropriations bill. Table 2 lists the total funding provided for each of the titles in the bill for FY2008 and the amount requested for that title for FY2009. Since 2003, the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations have reorganized their subcommittee structure three times. In 2003, a new subcommittee (Homeland Security) was added; in order to maintain the existing number of subcommittees at 13, the Transportation appropriations subcommittees were combined with the Treasury, Postal Service, and General Government appropriations subcommittees, becoming the Subcommittees on Transportation, Treasury, and Independent Agencies. In early 2005, the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations again reorganized their subcommittee structures. The House Committee on Appropriations reduced its number of subcommittees from 13 to 10. This change included combining the Transportation, Treasury, and Independent Agencies subcommittee with the District of Columbia subcommittee; to the resulting subcommittee, in addition, jurisdiction over appropriations for the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Judiciary, as well as several additional independent agencies, was added. The subcommittee was then known as the Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury, Housing and Urban Development, The Judiciary, District of Columbia, and Independent Agencies (or TTHUD). The Senate Committee on Appropriations reduced its number of subcommittees to 12. The Senate also added jurisdiction over appropriations for the Departments of Housing and Urban Development and the Judiciary to the Transportation, Treasury, and Independent Agencies subcommittee. The Senate retained a separate District of Columbia Appropriations subcommittee. As a result, the areas of coverage of the House and Senate subcommittees with jurisdiction over this appropriations bill were almost, but not quite, identical; the major difference being that in the Senate the appropriations for the District of Columbia originate in a separate bill. At the beginning of the 110 th Congress in 2007, the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations again reorganized their subcommittee structures. The House and Senate committees divided the responsibilities of the TTHUD subcommittees between two subcommittees: Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies (THUD); and Financial Services and General Government, whose jurisdiction included the Treasury Department, the Judiciary, the Executive Office of the President, the District of Columbia, and many of the independent agencies formerly under the jurisdiction of the TTHUD subcommittees. These changes make year-to-year comparisons of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development appropriation bills complex, as their appropriations appear in different bills in combination with various other agencies. Other factors, such as supplemental appropriations for response to disasters (such as the damage caused by the Gulf Coast hurricanes in the fall of 2005) and changes in the makeup of the Department of Transportation (portions of which were transferred to the Department of Homeland Security in 2004), also complicate comparisons of year-to-year funding. Table 3 shows funding trends over the five-year period FY2004-FY2008, and the amounts requested for FY2009, for the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development. The purpose of Table 3 is to indicate trends in the funding for these agencies. Emergency supplemental appropriations are not included in the figures. The economic and political context within which the FY2009 transportation appropriations process is taking place is tumultuous. The significant rise in the price of fuel for cars, trucks, and commercial jets is having a major impact on components of the transportation industry. The commercial passenger aviation industry is projecting a loss of several billion dollars, and is cutting the number of flights offered and even eliminating some routes, reducing and in some cases eliminating air connections to some communities. Legislation reauthorizing the FAA's programs and activities continues to be debated in Congress. The authorization of the taxes and fees that support the airport and airway trust fund—the primary source of funding for federal aviation programs—was scheduled to lapse at the end of FY2007; these taxes and fees have been kept in force through a series of short-term authorization extensions. At the same time, there is widespread concern about the condition of the nation's infrastructure, a significant component of which is transportation infrastructure. The collapse of an Interstate Highway bridge in Minnesota in August 2007 created concern over the conditions of the nation's bridges. Portions of the Interstate Highway system are reaching the end of their projected 50-year lifespan. These factors, combined with concern over growing levels of traffic congestion, have led to calls for significant increases in spending on transportation infrastructure. The National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission has recommended that the federal surface transportation program be extensively restructured, and that surface transportation investment from all sources be more than doubled from its present level to $225 billion annually. While some in Congress are calling for greater levels of federal spending on transportation infrastructure, the primary source of federal highway funding, the Highway Account of the Highway Trust Fund, is projected to run short of money before the end of FY2009. This was foreseen in SAFETEA-LU, which called for a multi-billion dollar rescission of contract authority at the end of September 2009 to balance the account. But rising gas prices have led consumers to reduce their consumption of fuel, which is reducing the revenues coming in to the Highway Account. Congress is considering legislation that would provide money from the general fund to the Highway Account in order to forestall the Highway Account deficit in FY2009. The President's FY2009 budget requested a total of $64.5 billion for the Department of Transportation (DOT).