Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Wednesday he's facing a massive backlog of infrastructure projects that have been announced by the prior administration but lack the grant funding agreements required to advance the work.
"It's easy to blow the kazoo and send up the balloons when you announce a project," Duffy told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee during a hearing Wednesday. "The hard work is actually doing the grant agreement."
The committee hearing was supposed to focus on the crafting of the next highway bill but much of the time centered on how to advance stalled projects that have been approved under former President Joe Biden's signature Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act but remain delayed for various reasons.
Duffy estimated a pile of 3,200 announced projects that are awaiting formal grant funding agreements, in part because he said the Biden administration rushed through 950 project announcements between the election and when President Donald Trump was inaugurated.
"Announcing you have a project is fun, but truly the hard work is getting the grant agreement signed and the money out the door," he said. "Thirty-two hundred is going to take us some time."
Ranking Member Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., suggested the backlog exists partly because the transportation department is sifting through the projects to ensure they comply with executive orders from President Donald Trump.
"How many of those 3,200 projects that are stuck are stuck because they have words that the White House doesn't like, like equity and climate, scrubbed out to meet the new anti-heretical requirements of the [executive] orders and how much is a substantive problem?" Whitehouse asked.
"Many of these projects date back three and half years and so to think we can move through in two months 3,200 projects is impossible," Duffy responded. He said the DOT is reviewing projects to see if they include green energy or social justice requirements — but that review is actually complying with what Congress actually wanted when it signed the IIJA into place, he said.
"This committee considered whether to include 'green' and 'justice' and you didn't do it," Duffy said. "I'm actually complying with the will of the Congress by pulling it out, because it's not just language, it's requirements and it takes longer and costs more."
Ohio Republican Sen. Jon Husted urged Duffy to trim red tape to allow infrastructure projects to move more quickly.
"It takes longer and longer [to build infrastructure] and the rules and regulations are at the expense of Americans," Husted said.
Duffy said upwards of 40% of project costs is complying with rules and regulations, and the U.S. DOT would like to trim that down significantly.
"We have decades of laws and rules and regulations that make it really complicated to build," he said. "There are requirements that are put on funding that are in the [IIJA] that we have to do, but I've asked that we take out other requirements that we have as a department."
He added that he's also under pressure from Trump to announce projects.
"The president loves infrastructure, he wants big beautiful roads and bridges," he said. "The president is going to say to me, 'Why aren't you getting more projects out the door?'"
EPW Chair Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., is leading the Senate's effort to craft the next surface transportation bill when the IIJA expires in September 2026. Capito said she wants the next bill to eliminate unnecessary rules and "duplicative programs that invite regulatory overreach" as well as "increase funding for the highway formula programs that our states rely on."
