Appendix B: Keeping the financing available
The congressional renewals, funding and eligibility rules needed before 2029.
Supports financing the mobilization.
The plan expects the current Congress or the next Congress to renew the authorities that must remain available for the next administration, before the 2028 presidential election. That expectation rests on the established programs’ renewal record, their support across party lines, and the relatively small budget cost of much federal credit. It is a political judgment to organize around. The work must also cover subsidy and annual loan limits: keeping a program’s name in law is not enough to finance new projects.
Some deadlines arrive earlier. DPA and EXIM need action in 2026 to avoid lapses; EDF and the Office of Strategic Capital reach their present endpoints just before the 2028 election. The administration’s allies should seek extensions through the operating period, alongside the funding needed to use them. This appendix identifies the relevant powers and dates; Appendix A explains the amounts and financing requests.
Which instruments can finance industry
A federal loan program can only lend for the sector and the purpose Congress wrote into its statute. That is a constraint this plan has to work inside, but also should push to the absolute limit to get the job done. There is no general-purpose federal lender, which is precisely the gap a chartered Reconstruction Finance Corporation would fill. Until then, projects must be matched to the authority that can lawfully finance them. The following instruments carry most of the weight.
The Department of Energy's Energy Dominance Financing program reaches further than most people think. Its authority comes from Section 1706 of the Energy Policy Act, which is why it is often called “Section 1706.” Congress set a $250 billion ceiling on its loan-guarantee commitments, making it the largest single instrument in this plan.
The Trump administration's One Big Beautiful Bill Act replaced the old Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment program with Energy Dominance Financing under the same section. It widened what counts as energy infrastructure to include facilities and activities needed to identify, lease, develop, produce, process, transport, transmit, refine or generate energy and critical minerals. Processing and refining are in the statute, and critical minerals sit alongside energy, so a plant that refines lithium or processes cathode material can fit an authority that used to be read as a utility program.
The old requirement that fossil fuel projects cut their emissions was repealed at the same time. An administration pointing this money at clean industry would be using an instrument Congress widened for the opposite purpose. The eligible categories are retooling, repowering, repurposing or replacing infrastructure that has ceased operating, raising the capacity or output of infrastructure still running, and forecastable electric supply for grid reliability. General manufacturing with no energy or critical minerals connection remains outside. A heat pump plant is probably outside this program; eligible battery supply-chain projects can be inside it.1
New EDF commitments in 2029 require Congress to act. The deadline for making those commitments is September 30, 2028, before the election. The $1 billion Congress provided in 2025 to cover the government's estimated credit cost is available through the same date. It must be obligated — committed to particular loan projects, even if the loans have not fully disbursed. Existing commitments may continue to finance their specified projects after the deadline, subject to their terms. They do not leave the incoming president unassigned money for new projects.2
The $250 billion ceiling is the maximum Congress authorized the program to commit, not cash waiting to be lent. To use this program for new projects in 2029, Congress must extend or replace the commitment authority, and each guarantee must have its estimated credit cost covered. The financing request addresses both. Appropriating subsidy alone cannot cure an expired commitment deadline.
DOE's innovative energy loan-guarantee program, authorized by Section 1703, has a different reach. It finances eligible innovative products and processes that avoid, reduce, utilize or sequester air pollutants or human-caused greenhouse-gas emissions. The innovation may sit in the product, not in the production line, which is more flexible than it sounds. An advanced heat pump might qualify. A plant making commodity insulation generally would not qualify on innovation alone. A separate route for projects supported by state energy financing institutions can remove that innovation test; it is especially useful for the building work beyond the federal estate.
Section 1703's underlying authority is permanent. The July 2025 law rescinded its unobligated Inflation Reduction Act subsidy, while the IRA's additional $40 billion tranche of commitment authority runs only through September 30, 2026. That does not close every route through the program. Borrowers may pay the government's estimated credit cost when appropriated subsidy is unavailable, subject to the program's other limits. Congress also provided $150 million in January 2026 for small modular and advanced nuclear reactors, available until expended; those funds do not cover ordinary retrofits. The request in Appendix A would provide broader subsidy and the commitment authority needed to support the proposed lending volume.3
The Office of Strategic Capital at the Defense Department can lend for a factory. It was built to lend into the industrial base for critical components; its remit is the supply chain, not one sector of the energy economy. The plan aims to use it at a scale it has not yet reached. Like EDF, it needs an extension for new lending in 2029: its authority to make new loans and guarantees expires on October 1, 2028. Capitalizing it without extending that authority would not make new loans possible.4
Title III of the Defense Production Act offers another route: it spends directly on domestic production capacity. Presidential determinations — formal findings required to support action on a particular product — were signed for heat pumps and insulation in June 2022 and revoked in March 2025. A new president would prepare fresh determinations for signature on day one. But the signature works only if the authority and funds are available. Congress's September 2026 extension runs through December 11, 2026, so renewal through the operating period remains part of the work to do before inauguration.5
The deadlines before inauguration
The question for each program is what an administration can commit to a new project in 2029. That requires distinguishing the end of an authority from the end of a funding stream, and both from money already committed to earlier projects. The following calendar carries forward the September 6, 2026 legal account, with the DPA extension and the principal energy-program dates checked again on September 14. It describes when new commitments or funding need action; it does not declare that all existing balances vanish on those dates.
| Program or authority | Deadline or funding condition | What it means for the plan |
|---|---|---|
| Defense Production Act core authorities | December 11, 2026, following the September 2026 extension | Further renewal and available Title III funds are needed for new production commitments in 2029 |
| Section 1703 innovative energy guarantees | Permanent underlying authority; unobligated IRA subsidy rescinded in July 2025; the additional IRA $40bn commitment tranche runs through September 30, 2026 | Borrower-paid subsidy remains possible within applicable limits. Broader subsidized lending needs funding and sufficient commitment authority |
| TIFIA and surface transportation funding | Current surface transportation extension through December 11, 2026 | Continued funding must be secured; existing TIFIA funds remain available until expended |
| Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing, or RRIF | No general program sunset | New rail projects need available commitment capacity and credit-risk funding; nonfederal payments can supply the latter |
| Rural Business and Industry guarantees | Annual loan levels and funding | The underlying program does not expire with the Farm Bill. Future guarantee capacity and subsidy depend on appropriations |
| Rural Energy for America Program | Continuing base funding, with additional annual funding and guarantee capacity | The program has continuing statutory funds; the amount usable for new projects must still be established |
| Rural Energy Savings Program | Available appropriations and repayments | Existing funds can remain available until expended and repayments can finance further loans; there is no blanket September 2026 program sunset |
| Community Health Center Fund, the mandatory portion of Health Center Program funding | Scheduled funding stream ends December 31, 2026 | Continued funding needs congressional action. Previously appropriated amounts remain available until expended. The National Health Service Corps has the same scheduled funding endpoint |
| Export-Import Bank | December 31, 2026 | Renewal is needed for new export-finance and domestic-manufacturing commitments; existing obligations may continue under their terms |
| Office of Strategic Capital | New lending authority expires October 1, 2028 | Both an extension and available credit subsidy are needed for new 2029 loans and guarantees |
| Energy Dominance Financing, Section 1706 | New commitment deadline and current subsidy availability end September 30, 2028 | Congress must extend or replace the commitment authority; new guarantees also need their estimated credit cost covered |
| Federal energy savings performance contracts | Permanent authority | Eligible projects can use private capital repaid from existing agency energy budgets |
| HUD Section 108 | Standing program; guarantee commitments limited by appropriations acts | Borrower fees cover estimated credit subsidy, but Congress still determines the amount the program can commit |
TIFIA and RRIF together accounted for about $6.3 billion in the 2025 lending estimates, but that historical total does not give them a shared expiration date. Similarly, the mandatory Community Health Center Fund has supplied roughly 70 percent of Health Center Program funding; that is why maintaining its funding stream matters to the proposed clinics.6789
The congressional work before the election
The renewal expectation has concrete precedents. The Defense Production Act has repeatedly been extended, most recently in the September 2026 law moving its covered termination date to December 11. Its history also includes lapses, so repeated renewal is evidence of an achievable congressional task, not permission to disregard the calendar. CRS testimony, June 12, 2025; enrolled H.R. 6500, Division B §2004.
EXIM provides an established example of bipartisan renewal: the bank reports 17 reauthorizations by large bipartisan majorities. Its December 2019 reauthorization extended authority for seven years. In February 2026, Republican Senator Kevin Cramer and Democratic Senator Mark Warner introduced a 10-year extension proposal. That is current evidence of support across party lines, although introduction is not enactment. EXIM’s renewal record; 2019 enactment announcement; Cramer–Warner proposal, February 4, 2026.
The newer instruments have their own evidence. The July 2025 law already extended EDF’s commitment deadline from 2026 to 2028. On June 9, 2026, the Defense Department proposed extending OSC’s new-lending authority to October 1, 2035. That proposal shows executive support for continuation; it is not a passed extension or proof of bipartisan votes. These recent programs do not inherit DPA’s or EXIM’s decades of renewals. P.L. 119-21 §50403; Defense Department proposal, pages 15–20.
The work before inauguration is to preserve usable capacity. Allies in the current Congress or the next must secure the extensions and financing that allow new commitments in 2029, with the electoral deadline and each earlier program deadline in view. The transition team needs an account of what remains uncommitted, what is already tied to earlier projects, and which proposed investments still await a vote. A short extension is useful, but a succession of short extensions is not a secured two-year financing plan.
The incoming president can begin with the continuing powers and available funds. The largest expansion depends on the congressional work described here and in Appendix A. If an extension or refill fails, the affected projects need another eligible source of financing or must wait; the Ballroom cannot supply the missing authority itself. That is the practical distinction between using existing government to its limits and creating the full RFC.