NACWA LinkedIn Post 4/3/2026
NACWA is shocked — shocked! — that anyone would propose cutting FY27 funding to a program that can’t even utilize a fraction of its prior years’ funding and has more than $300m in carryover budgetary authority, enough to replicate its entire loan portfolio?
Is this…sarcasm? As in “Of course we know WIFIA doesn’t need and can’t even use the money in FY27, but we’ll show the federal taxpayer chumps that lobbyists can always deliver the goods to their special interests no matter how stupid or wasteful the spending is. Just like we did for WIFIA’s equally pointless FY26 funding. There’s nothing that simplistic ‘narratives’ about “keeping America strong, healthy, resilient, and secure” can’t camouflage. Abandon all hope, taxpayers — we’re laughing at you.”
You want shocking? Look at the reality that this narrative bullshit supports:
- Free interest rate options for AAA water systems like Silicon Valley Water District and other highly rated and well-resourced WIFIA borrowers.
- Blocking any WIFIA amendments that might make the Program useful for water projects that really need subsidized financing for communities where affordability is a real issue.
- Being silent — or maybe even quietly supportive of — the egregious distortion of FCRA budgeting rules to effectively shut down the primary purpose of the CWIFP section of WIFIA.
- And worst of all — using FCRA re-estimate mechanisms to hide gigantic transfers of real taxpayer resources in off-budget mandatory appropriations:
Source: OMB apportionments website; InRecap analysis
If something can’t go on forever, it will stop. Narratives that are ridiculously disconnected from reality can be surprisingly persistent during prosperous times because the cost of the looting and misallocation they enable isn’t immediately felt. But when tougher times come, reality asserts itself remorselessly. We’re not there yet, but very close, I think.
WIFIA reform will happen — because it must. It’s not difficult and doesn’t need to take much time or effort — amendments in WIFIA reauthorization legislation based on prior bills could accomplish much of what’s required. And then, and only then, will requests for new WIFIA taxpayer funding be justified.