On his first day in office, President Trump issued the Executive Order (EO) Unleashing American Energy, blocking the release of IIJA and IRA dollars. Later, the guidance was updated to clarify that only funding perpetuating the “Green New Deal” remain off-limits, providing relief to organizations like the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies who felt safe to say that water funding likely would not come under threat.
This relative safety dissipated with a memo sent on Monday, January 27th, from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to government agencies. Federal agencies were barred from issuing grants, loans, and other forms of federal financial assistance for 90 days. The memo appeared to apply to all federal funding, generating confusion as to its scope. The order was to go into effect at 5pm EST on Tuesday, January 28th, but a federal judge in the District of Columbia blocked the order through at least Monday, February 3rd. Wednesday, January 29th, the OMB rescinded its memo released on Monday. However, White House officials noted that the withdrawal of the memo does not equate to a withdrawal of the federal funding freeze or, more specifically, the EOs issued by President Trump. The Water Program Portal (WPP) will be monitoring developments on this closely and will keep users updated.
It is not within the president’s power to block funding that has been legislatively appropriate by Congress, as enacted by the 1974 Impoundment Control Act. The president may veto spending before it is signed into law, but the disbursement the memo sought to pause originated from bills like the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which are enacted pieces of legislation.
Despite the judicial block on the federal order and the memo’s recission, questions remain about how unspent funding appropriated by IIJA and IRA as well as obligated grants that have not yet been fully paid out yet will be impacted by the Trump Administration’s 90-day freeze.
Although the Biden administration awarded much of the grant funding for water infrastructure, some appropriated funding was not available to spend until this fiscal year and beyond. Furthermore, plenty of obligated grants announced since IIJA and IRA’s passages have not been fully paid out to recipients. Most obligated awards are not administered as a lump sum up-front and instead are paid out as work is completed. The Biden Administration had released a report delineating that funding; the report is no longer online but has been archived.
WPP and our sister product the Climate Program Portal will continue our data archiving efforts to preserve access to information regarding IIJA and IRA. Here is a quick summary of our actions:
- IIJA/IRA Program Webpages: We have archived many webpages for IIJA and IRA programs, requests, and award announcements by saving them as PDFs. We will be adding an “archive” link to our dashboard next to the original link.
- Federal Resources: We have saved many critical datasets, guidance documents, fact sheets, and other resources. We are making an inventory of everything we have saved and will be uploading them to WPP so folks can access them in one place.
- Partner Efforts: We are compiling a list of all parallel efforts to archive or reproduce federal resources so users can see the great work others have done. We will upload this to WPP as well.
