More than 2,500 infrastructure and energy awards worth $33.6 billion were still awaiting decisions after federal reviews ordered in 2025, according to the Government Accountability Office.
Four agencies approved most of the awards they reviewed: about 9,500 worth $128 billion. They canceled roughly 800 awards worth $17.8 billion, while the remaining undecided awards stayed in administrative limbo as of dates that varied by agency.
The review covers the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Transportation, Department of the Interior and National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Together, those agencies received $629 billion in budget authority from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act during fiscal years 2022 through 2025.
Beginning in January 2025, executive orders directed agencies to pause and review funding for alignment with administration priorities. Agencies could approve, modify or cancel awards, and their approaches to continuing obligations and disbursements varied.
GAO uses “canceled” as a broad category. It includes awards terminated or rescinded by an agency, withdrawn before completion or discontinued by a recipient. The category therefore should not be read as 800 identical federal cancellations or as proof that every dollar had already been spent.
Pending also does not necessarily mean a project stopped entirely. Award status, obligation and disbursement are different stages. An agency can have budget authority, obligate funds through an award and disburse money later as work proceeds.
The report describes a large majority of funding as obligated across the selected agencies, but it found that review activity changed the timing and certainty facing recipients. Grant recipients told GAO that distribution delays affected their ability to implement projects.
The figures have important limits. Agency reporting dates were not uniform. EPA and NTIA did not provide all requested data. The Department of Energy and Department of Agriculture—both major recipients under the laws—will be addressed separately.
That means the $33.6 billion pending total is a defensible count for the selected agencies and reported dates, not a complete current measure for every infrastructure dollar across government.
For communities and contractors, the next useful update is project-level resolution: which awards move forward, which are modified, which cancellations survive legal or administrative challenges and how much previously obligated money is ultimately disbursed. Aggregate approval counts show scale; final award records will show what is actually built.