Construction-materials Economist Ed Sullivan is looking at the wind-down of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and is pessimistic about what he sees.
The IIJA expires Sept. 30, 2026. While the House Committee on Transportation reached agreement on a replacement of IIJA, it never reached the floor of the House for a full vote. The Senate has no companion legislation. Given the dim prospects of having a replacement bill before IIJA’s expiration, both houses of Congress have proposed a continuing resolution (CR), which keeps most spending going in the interim, Sullivan noted.
Given the elections, a divided post-election Congress probably has no appetite for hard infrastructure votes in a three-week lame-duck window. It is unlikely a new bill will be reached by the December deadline. This suggests a second CR will likely materialize and place the onus of a replacement program onto the next Congress.
The second CR is assumed to be long enough to give the new Congress time to get accustomed and resolve the issues surrounding the IIJA replacement. Our baseline forecast assumes a replacement bill will be in place Sept. 30, 2027, one year after the expiration of IIJA. Historical precedent confirms this pattern as surface transportation bills have required multiple extensions in every reauthorization cycle since 1991, Sullivan concluded.
Contact Sullivan at edsullivan@thesullivanreport.com to read the entire report. Access additional construction materials data at www.thesullivanreport.com.
