On December 16, 2009, President Obama signed the FY2010 Department of Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriation Act into law (Divison A of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2010, P.L. 111-117 ), after Congress had passed the conference version of the bill on December 10, 2006. The enacted bill provided a total of $122.1 billion, $15.1 billion (14.1%) more than the equivalent figure provided in FY2009 and $1.1 billion less than the amount requested by the Administration. The President's net FY2010 request for the programs covered by this appropriations bill was $123.2 billion (after scorekeeping adjustments). This was $16.2 billion (15.1%) more than the amount enacted in the FY2009 THUD appropriations act. DOT and HUD received additional funding in FY2009 through the ARRA emergency stimulus act (see Appendix for more information). The request for DOT was $72.4 billion, $1.0 billion (1.4%) more than the $71.5 billion of total new funding provided in the FY2009 THUD appropriations act. The request reflected slight increases over FY2009 funding for most DOT programs. The HUD request was $45.5 billion, $4.0 billion (7.7%) more than the comparable amount of new funding provided in the regular annual appropriation for FY2009. The House-passed bill provided $47.1 billion, while the Senate Committee on Appropriations recommended $45.8 billion. The President requested $5.3 billion for other related agencies in the THUD bill, compared to the $303 million provided in FY2009. The difference was due to the President's request for $5 billion for a new independent federal agency, a national infrastructure bank. Appropriators considered this request as part of the request for DOT funding. The President also requested the termination of five programs that received a total of $212 million in funding in the FY2009 THUD appropriations act. This was part of a budget-wide effort that requested 121 terminations, reductions, and savings in the FY2010 budget, totaling $$17 billion, from "programs that do not accomplish the goals set for them, do not do so efficiently, or do a job already done by another initiative." Congress did not fund two of the five programs in the FY2010 THUD act; the remaining three received increased funding, totaling $346 million (see Table 1 ). Leaders of the House and Senate Committees on Appropriation declared their desire to pass all 12 FY2010 appropriations bills separately, and thus avoid having to bundle two or more of the bills into a consolidated or omnibus appropriations act, as has happened in each of the past several years. This goal was made more challenging by the fact that 2009 was the first year of a new administration. President Obama did not take office until January 20, 2009; his administration was not prepared to submit a regular budget request for FY2010 during the first week in February, the usual date. Congress did not pass the last of the FY2009 appropriations acts until March 10, 2009. The Administration's detailed budget request for FY2010 was submitted to Congress on May 7, 2009. Also, Congress was dealing with several major initiatives during 2009, including energy and health care reform, in addition to dealing with the effects of the recession. Table 2 notes the status of the FY2010 THUD appropriations bill, and Table 3 lists the total funding provided for each of the titles in the bill for FY2009 and the amount requested for that title for FY2010. 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 4 shows funding trends for DOT and HUD over the period FY2004-FY2009, omitting emergency funding and other supplemental funding, and the amounts requested for FY2010. The purpose of Table 4 is to indicate trends in the funding for these agencies. Emergency supplemental appropriations are not included in the figures. Table 5 presents funding provided for DOT in the emergency supplemental funding act passed in February 2009 (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009); the funding provided in the FY2009 THUD appropriations act passed as Division I of the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009 in March of 2009, and the amounts requested for FY2010 by the Administration and reported by the House and the Senate Committee on Appropriations. The President's FY2010 budget requested a total of $72.4 billion in funding for the Department of Transportation (DOT). That was $5.2 billion (7.7%) above the $67.2 billion, excluding emergency funding, provided for FY2009. DOT funding is provided in two forms: discretionary funding drawn from the general fund of the Treasury (i.e., general funds), and contract authority. Contract authority is a type of budget authority—in the case of DOT, derived from the existence of the Aviation and Highway Trust Funds—that is available for "obligation" (which makes the federal government obligated to pay the money to the recipient) as a result of provisions in authorizing legislation, without requiring any further legislative action (i.e., without any appropriation by Congress). In order to impose a limit on the amount of money that the government can be obligated to spend, the amount of contract authority that can be obligated is limited by a spending control mechanism called a "limitation on obligations" (often referred to as "ObLim" or "Oblimit"). The ObLim for each year is set in the authorizing legislation, and is included in the DOT appropriations bill. In most discussions, the Oblim is analogous to an appropriation, in that it is considered to be the best indicator of the amount of contract authority actually being made available for use by recipients. In this report, references to DOT funding include both discretionary funds and the contract authority Oblim, unless otherwise indicated. In preparing legislation to fund DOT for FY2010, Congress faced several issues both within and outside the context of the President's budget request and FY2010 transportation funding initiatives. These included the solvency of the Highway Trust Fund, the pending expiration of authorizations for federal aviation, highway, and transit programs at the end of FY2009, and a pending $8.7 billion rescission of contract authority previously provided to the states at the end of FY2009. Other funding issues included the President's request for two new programs, $5 billion for a national infrastructure bank and $1 billion for high-speed and intercity passenger rail grants. Typically, all or virtually all federal highway funding is drawn from the Highway Account of the Highway Trust Fund, whose revenues come largely from taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel sales and on sales of large trucks and truck tires. For example, only $320 million of the $41.7 billion provided for the Federal Highway Administration in the FY2009 THUD appropriations act came from general funds; the remainder was contract authority. In addition, most federal transit funding also comes from the transit account of the Highway Trust Fund (about $2 billion of FTA's $10.2 billion in the FY2009 regular appropriation came from general funds).