Infrastructure

Proposed 2018 budget: $114.4B

The Agriculture Department, Interior Department, Energy Department, Transportation Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development control much of the nation’s vast infrastructure.

[ Six maps that show the anatomy of America’s vast infrastructure]

These departments, especially HUD, lost significant funding as Reagan took office. His promise to shrink the size of the government included significant reductions in federal housing funds.

Much of the other fluctuation in these budgets has been driven by political and financial turmoil. In the late 1970s, increased oil production in response to the energy crisis caused a spike in the Energy Department’s budget. A few years later, in the early 1980s, the “farm crisis” — a period of falling crop prices and lower incomes for farmers — led to large payouts from the Agriculture Department.

More recently, as part of the stimulus following the 2008 financial crisis, many of these departments, most notably Transportation, received large budget increases. Note that though the 2009 budget was set during the Bush administration, the stimulus itself was negotiated and passed by President Obama.

With Trump’s 2018 proposal, all of these departments are looking at cuts of between 12 and 21 percent. Much of this money would be taken out of research and climate-change-related programs.