WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), along with Senators Gary Peters (D-MI), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Roger Wicker (R-MS), and Todd Young (R-IN), introduced the Securing Smart Investments in Our Ports Act, which would help ensure that Texas Gulf Coast ports receive a fair share of federal funding available for port infrastructure upgrades and repairs.

“Texas’ seaports facilitate hundreds of billions of dollars in international trade that benefits state economies across the country, but the current division of funding for critical infrastructure projects doesn’t reflect this reality,” said Sen. Cornyn. “This bill would direct the Maritime Administration to even the playing field between ports on the East and West Coasts and those on the Gulf and Great Lakes, ensuring a fairer funding allocation for investments in Texas and elsewhere.”

Background:

The Port Infrastructure Development Program (PIDP) is a competitive federal grant program administered by the Maritime Administration that provides funding to improve the safety, efficiency, or reliability of our nation’s ports – including investments to reconstruct docks, improve access to key transportation routes, expand storage capacity, and more. From 2019 to 2024, Great Lakes ports received as little as two percent of all available PIDP awards, with Gulf Coast ports receiving as little as six percent of that same funding. Meanwhile, ports along the East and West Coasts of the United States were awarded almost 70 percent of the available funding.

The Securing Smart Investments in Our Ports Act would help address this imbalance by directing the Maritime Administration to consider fair regional distribution of PIDP funds when awarding grants. To read more about the PIDP, click here.