Same Ball. Same Lucy. Same Result.

Congress is negotiating a new “bipartisan” bill and praising small "wins," as though the administration hasn’t already shown us exactly what happens next.

For months, I have been looking for a way to describe what I see happening with the surface transportation reauthorization bill. I was talking about it with my husband (who often has to hear me rant about transportation and land use issues), and he said it sounded like the Lucy and the football meme. He nailed it.

You know the scene. Lucy holds the football. Charlie Brown, who has fallen for this before and sworn each time it was the last, backs up, takes a running start, and swings his leg. Lucy yanks the ball away. Charlie Brown lands flat on his back. It happens every single time, and yet he is somehow still surprised.

Last year, when USDOT canceled grants for safety, transit, sidewalks, and bike lanes—especially in districts held by the minority party—those members of the House ran full speed at that ball. One member accused the president of “targeting his political opponents with these cuts.” Another called it a violation of Congress’s constitutional “power of the purse.” Every member whose district got hit, which was most of the minority party, seemed genuinely stunned. Advocacy groups, T4America included, were right there with them, bewildered that an administration would ignore the law, especially one that is famously bipartisan and in some ways even nonpartisan.

Then this spring, the leaders of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee announced a bipartisan deal on a new surface transportation bill, and it received overwhelming support—as if those rescissions never happened. I am trying to follow the logic here, and I keep coming up empty.

The current law—funding highways, transit, and railroads—called the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, passed in 2021 with votes from both parties, and a lot of people still talk about it like a landmark achievement: a generational infrastructure investment, new resilience and emissions programs, new efforts to reconnect communities cut apart by highways. My organization was never quite as thrilled. The exciting new programs were real, but small, sitting next to the same old formula funding that continues to pay for the kinds of projects causing the very damage that those new small programs are meant to undo.

Even that lopsided arrangement turned out to be too much innovation for this administration’s taste. It has simply implemented the parts it likes, and ignored, undercut, or blocked the rest.

So when the new reauthorization bill (BUILD America 250) showed up without even those modest programs, I watched the reaction from Capitol Hill and much of the advocacy world with genuine confusion. Some on the majority side worried about the price tag, fine. But the minority, and a lot of advocates, offered a shrug and a “well, it’s not great, but it’s the best we can get in this Congress.” Some even pointed out, almost triumphantly, “at least we kept Safe Streets and Roads for All!” Which—did nobody notice that this administration isn’t running that program as written? That’s not a save. That’s a piece of paper. A piece of paper this administration has already shown it’s willing to shred.

If that isn’t enough evidence, the New York Times recently reported that the Lucy and the Football Administration has put the entire transit capital investment grant program on hold. Is that enough to make anyone question whether there is a problem here?

I keep coming back to the idea that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. We already know what this administration does with programs it doesn’t like. So calling anything in this bill a “win” doesn’t track. The only victories on offer are the ones the administration decides to allow, whenever it decides to allow them. If your priorities—or your organization’s mission—are something this administration is openly hostile to, and you’re still voting to hand it more money and less oversight, I have to ask: what exactly do you think you’re protecting?

Here’s the part that really has me shaking my head: even now, when it’s obvious to anyone watching that a full reauthorization isn’t happening this Congress and this bill will get extended into a Congress that might look very different, a lot of members of what could be the next majority—and some advocacy groups that would theoretically do better under a change in leadership—still seem to think this is simply as good as it gets. I have to wonder, why don’t they want a shot at this bill from the majority?

I’ve long complained that the transportation bill is poorly understood on the Hill because its funding sits outside the annual appropriations fight — it doesn’t come up often enough for most members to really learn it. But I don’t think that explains this. I have never seen this level of just...going through the motions and ignoring what is happening around us. Running at the ball again, enthusiastically, and calling it strategy.

If the legislative process is just going to be a pantomime, do us all a favor and take the show to an actual stage. At least there, when Lucy pulls the ball away, everybody watching knows it’s a joke.

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