A pair of senators have introduced legislation that would scrutinize the compliance issues for rules governing federally assisted infrastructure contracts.
A recently issued watchdog report from within the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) concluded that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has not consistently enforced Buy America requirements in contracts funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA).
DOT, FAA, IJJA … All these acronyms make for a lot of alphabet soup, but the stakes are high: The FAA has overseen $15 billion in airport and aviation infrastructure spending through a program created by the IIJA, which passed Congress in 2021. And that’s only one big pot of money; the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which passed Congress last year, provided another $12.5 billion for infrastructure upgrades. All this spending is subject to the Build America, Buy America (BABA) Act, a major expansion of the domestic procurement rules that govern contracts for federally backed infrastructure projects.
Prior to BABA, federal Buy America laws were limited in their coverage and eroded by waivers and loopholes. Billions of taxpayer dollars meant for federally assisted infrastructure projects were spent annually on foreign-made products and materials. With its enactment, BABA applied Buy America rules to all federal departments and agencies and extended coverage to all products and materials used to complete federally assisted infrastructure projects, effectively building upon and strengthening Buy America laws that have been used for decades on highway, transit, rail and airport projects.
Buy America is a great, commonsense way to use the power of federal spending to boost our domestic manufacturing sector, creating jobs and strengthening companies across the U.S. industrial base. But it needs to be implemented for it to work.
But nearly five years after Congress passed a law to expand these procurement rules and maximize the use of American-made iron, steel, manufactured products and construction materials in federally funded infrastructure, it’s still not being fully implemented. And this watchdog report is a great example of how it’s not being implemented.
The report found the IIJA-funded FAA contracts demonstrated a loose use of BABA waivers, as well as issues with BABA data collection and reporting. Perhaps even more alarming, more than half of the contracts reviewed failed arguably the most basic BABA enforcement step: Including Buy America clauses in them. Contracting officers are required to include applicable Buy America-related clauses, yet in five of the nine contracts reviewed – representing approximately $272.7 million in IIJA funds – they were just missing.
Now, two U.S. senators are going right at trying to correct it. On Monday, Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) and Jim Banks (R-Ind.) introduced the aptly titled Build America, Buy America Compliance Act, which would require the head of every federal agency to submit annual reports detailing BABA’s implementation. The reports must identify all federal financial assistance programs for infrastructure and specify which have fully implemented BABA and which have not.
“For programs that have fully implemented BABA,” a one-pager on the bill explains, “agencies must describe all actions taken to comply with the law and maintain existing Buy America laws, policies, or regulations that meet or exceed its requirements.
“For programs that have not fully implemented BABA, agencies must provide a timeline and steps they will take to achieve full compliance, including efforts to replace broad, general applicability waivers with targeted, project-specific waivers wherever possible.”
AAM thinks this bill is a great idea and we offer our full endorsement. Said AAM President Scott Paul:
The Build America, Buy America Act was enacted in 2021 to ensure taxpayers’ dollars spent on infrastructure strengthen U.S. supply chains and support America’s workers. But that promise only works if the law is fully and consistently implemented across federal programs. As we approach the five-year anniversary of this important law, AAM applauds Senators Baldwin and Banks for bringing transparency and accountability to the process by requiring agencies to clearly identify where Buy America requirements are being applied and where they are not.
You can find the full bill text here.