In dollar terms, there are two big differences between what the House wants and what the President wants:

Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund spend-down. The Office of Management and Budget was never happy about the provision that chairmen Shelby and DeFazio finally got enacted into law in 2020 to encourage a 10-year spend-down of accumulated Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund balances. The provision basically says that, for budget scorekeeping purposes, Congress can spend up to the last completed fiscal year’s HMTF receipts and interest, plus a fixed amount of the balance, and it is if that appropriation just does not exist for budget scorekeeping purposes. (A spending cap exclusion, not a spending cap adjustment.)

This year, the amount that the law says can be spent out of the HMTF and hidden from the budget scorekeepers is almost $2.8 billion, but the President only requested $1.8 billion in his budget. The House, obviously, restores that entire $1.045 billion, but that extra spending does not count against the budget ceiling for the bill set by Republicans on Appropriations this week.

Construction. The House bill takes this account into overdrive, giving it almost $1.1 billion more than last year’s law, and $838 million more than the President’s request. Sadly, we have to wait and see the draft committee report next week to get a sense of which projects that the House bill will favor with that extra money.