GRANITE CITY – Congresswoman Nikki Budzinski stopped at Granite City for a roundtable discussion with local leaders about funding for local projects.
On Tuesday, April 15, 2025, Budzinski and leaders from local communities met at America’s Central Port in Granite City to discuss the Continuing Resolution recently passed by Congressional Republicans. This resolution did not include funding for 15 projects in the 13th District, which Budzinski represents.
“We had a number of projects that, had we reached a full and complete federal budget in this last fiscal year, we would have been able to award these well-deserving communities with this commitment,” Budzinski explained. “These are projects that had already gone through the appropriations process and had been approved, but we just failed to reach, under Republican leadership, a complete federal budget. So this can has continued to be kicked down the road, quite frankly, for the last several years.”
Budzinski said the purpose of the roundtable was to hear from these communities that would be impacted by the lack of funding. She pointed to a project in Cahokia Heights that was supposed to reduce sewage overflows, another in Champaign that aimed to improve public transportation, and more.
The House Committee on Appropriations had awarded $67,451,600 for these 15 projects in the 13th District. But they were ultimately not funded by the Continuing Resolution. Budzinski emphasized that these projects are now on hold.
“What I’ve heard today was the level of uncertainty is really paralyzing for a lot of these communities,” Budzinski said. “These are all shovel-ready projects. But even though they’re shovel-ready, if they don’t know that a check is coming, a community cannot be on the hook for that bill. So that’s what we’re really trying to highlight, is that we want to see that money come home.”
Budzinski said she would be resubmitting these projects during Fiscal Year 2026 for budget negotiations, and she hopes to achieve bipartisan support. She said these community projects had been caught up in “all of the political noise and, quite frankly, toxicity within Washington.”
“These projects, each and every one of them, these are not Democratic or Republican priorities,” she added. “These are priorities of the communities, of the working people that I’m so proud to represent in Congress, and they deserve a lot better.”
