President Obama is proposing a record $3.99 trillion budget for fiscal 2016 that boosts overall federal spending by 6.4 percent, including an extra $478 billion public works program financed by taxes on overseas earnings.
But the White House spending plan would still cut spending from current budget levels by 13.2 percent for the Army Corps of Engineers to repair and replace aging dams, locks and waterways, including the crumbling Chickamauga lock in Chattanooga.
Despite a higher tax on diesel fuel used by river barges, the Corps’ civil works budget plan for the current year unveiled Tuesday does not include any funds for the replacement lock at the Chickamauga lock, which has been stalled for the past two years after funding ran out in the Corps’ Inland Waterways Trust Fund.
“It is disappointing to see so little appropriations funding requested for lock and dam modernization in a presidential budget portrayed as focused on infrastructure investment,” said Michael J. Toohey, president of the Waterways Council Inc., an industry trade group pushing for lock and dam improvements.
The White House is boosting its budget recommendations from a year ago for the Corps, but the suggested 2016 spending for inland waterway projects is still below what Congress eventually appropriated for the Corps in 2015.