"[2] In 1965, Najeeb Halaby, the chief of the independent Federal Aviation Agency strongly urged President Lyndon Johnson to set up a cabinet-level Department of Transportation.

Halaby proposed merging the responsibilities of the undersecretary of commerce for transportation and the Federal Aviation Agency to achieve this goal.

[8] President Barack Obama's budget request for 2010 also included $1.83 billion in funding for major transit projects.

The budget authorization is broken down as follows:[9] In 2021, President Joe Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

The $1.2 trillion act included over $660 billion in funding for transportation-related infrastructure projects over the five-year period of fiscal years 2022–2026.