“Our budget carefully focuses taxpayer resources on items critical to our most fundamental mission of safety and investing in transportation infrastructure,” Duffy said in prepared remarks.

However, lawmakers pointed out that budget documents they received propose $3 billion in increases to specific DOT programs. The proposal would increase DOT’s budget by $1.5 billion, leaving cuts to be made that have not been spelled out yet. 

“There is still much about this request that remains unknown as we await the full fiscal 2026 budget.” said Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), chair of the House Committee on Appropriations’ transportation, housing and urban development subcommittee. 

Grant Reviews

Several lawmakers questioned Duffy about DOT review of a backlog of 3,200 grants he has said were awarded as far back as 2022, but had not been finalized. The department announced this week it has so far signed off on 405 of the grants, together worth nearly $5 billion. 

“No one is more frustrated by the inefficiencies of this process than I am,” Duffy said during one of the budget hearings.

Part of the issue is that DOT uses as many as 14 systems to track grants across the department, according to Duffy. He acknowledged that the process “is not fast enough” and could take several years to complete at the current pace. The agency is working to consolidate those systems into one dashboard for ease and transparency, and also looking at AI and other tools that could help hasten reviews, he added, but Duffy could not say how soon reviews may be complete.

Under the Biden administration, the number of approved DOT grants rose from 330 in 2021 to more than 1,500 last year, according to Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.). 

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), ranking member of the Senate subcommittee on transportation, housing and urban development, said she was worried DOT “has buried itself in red tape” by re-reviewing thousands of previously awarded grants. 

“There’s no doubt that the months-long effort to re-review grants is slowing down transportation projects in every single state,” she said. “The department is also struggling because it has lost thousands of employees through the deferred resignation program. It simply makes no sense to create more unnecessary duplicative work on grants when you have fewer people to re-review them.”

The reviews include removing requirements around diversity, equity and inclusion, social justice and the environment that were added during the Biden administration but not mandated by Congress when they appropriated funding for the grant programs, Duffy said, telling lawmakers that the requirements make projects more expensive and that removing them would open funding for more projects. 

DOT is not simply canceling projects because they met requirements around DEI or other Biden policies that the Trump administration has not continued, he stated. Instead, when crafting grant agreements, the requirements are left out. 

Gillibrand asked Duffy if he is committed to paying out grants that had been awarded to major transit projects— including LA Metro’s Westside Metro Purple (D) Line Extension section three, Chicago Transit Authority’s Red Line extension, the Southwest light rail project in Minneapolis, Second Avenue Subway Phase 2 extension in New York, Hudson Tunnel Project between New York and New Jersey and the Lynnwood Link extension in Washington state. 

Duffy said he would not cancel the grant agreements, but while answering questions from another lawmaker, he did note there have been some grant agreements he is “not going to honor.” He pointed to some canceled university research grants as an example. 

“I’m not about slashing projects,” Duffy said. “We want to build.”