The City Commissioners duly submitted the budget request, and on January 6, 1938, the Bureau of the Budget submitted to Congress a city budget that listed an underpass at Dupont Circle and the new Pennsylvania Avenue Bridge as its top transportation infrastructure priorities. The authorized cost of the bridge was $2 million, with a 1939 appropriation of $650,000. But the chair of the Subcommittee on Appropriations in the House, Representative Ross A. Collins (D-Mississippi), argued that a far more important project was the K Street viaduct, a proposed elevated highway over K Street NW and Water Street NW between 26th Street NW and Key Bridge. As there was no opposition to the Dupont Circle underpass on fiscal grounds, the bridge appropriation would be deleted. The subcommittee also added funds for the Thomas Circle underpass. The Washington Board of Trade's bridge committee was outraged, and called for protests by all citizens associations in the city. Adelbert W. Lee, chair of the bridge committee, pointed out that more than 15,000 vehicles a day crossed the bridge (the oldest in the city), and that modern firefighting equipment could not cross the bridge due to weight restrictions. Lee said Collins' claim about opposition was untrue, and that both the Dupont Circle and Thomas Circle underpasses were opposed by some citizens while not a single protest had been registered against the bridge proposal. Nonetheless, the bill went to the House floor on January 27, 1938, without the bridge appropriation. Representative Stephen Warfield Gambrill (D-Maryland) attempted to amend the bill on the floor of the House on February 1 by restoring the funds, but the amendment was not offered after Collins won a Point of order vote against it. On February 5, the Federation of Citizens Associations passed a resolution advocating cancellation of all underpass construction so that the Pennsylvania Avenue Bridge could be rebuilt.