Trump downplays priority of his infrastructure plan
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump sent Congress a sweeping plan Monday to rebuild the nation’s depleted roads and bridges — then immediately raised doubts about how committed he was to delivering on that campaign promise.
“If you want it badly, you’re going to get it,” Trump told state and local officials during a meeting at the White House. “And if you don’t want it, that’s OK with me too.”
Trump suggested that his proposal — aimed at spurring $1.5 trillion in spending over a decade — was not as important to him as recent administration efforts to cut taxes and boost military spending.
“If for any reason, they don’t want to support it, hey, that’s going to be up to them,” Trump said of the Republican-controlled Congress. “What was very important to me was the military, what was very important to me was the tax cuts, and what was very important to me was regulation.”
Speaking of infrastructure, Trump added: “This is of great importance, but it’s not nearly in that category. Because the states will have to do it themselves if we don’t do it. But I would like to help the states out.”
The administration’s plan is centered on using $200 billion in federal money to leverage more than $1 trillion in local and state tax dollars to fix America’s infrastructure, such as roads, highways, ports and airports. The administration released a 55-page “legislative outline” for lawmakers who will write the legislation.
With the plan heavily dependent on state and local dollars, Democrats warned it would raise tolls on commuters, sell off government- The White House has proposed an infrastructure plan for local governments to develop most of the funding. owned infrastructure to Wall Street and eliminate crucial environmental protections.
The proposal lists Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and Dulles International Airport as examples of assets that could be sold. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., warned that the proposal included studying whether the Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation’s largest public utility, should sell its transmission assets. He called it “a looney idea” with “zero chance of becoming law.”
“After a full year of empty boasts, the president has finally unveiled a puny infrastructure scam that fully fails to meet the need in America’s communities,” said House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California.
Convening a roomful of state and local leaders, Trump listened as governors and mayors pitched individual projects in their states and described the challenges involved with gaining federal permits.
Trump vowed repeatedly that the federal permitting process would be streamlined but said it would be up to state and local leaders to ensure that local permits don’t hold up worthy projects.
“Washington will no longer be a roadblock to progress. Washington will now be your partner,” Trump said.
“To me this is a very, very sexy subject,” Trump said. “The media doesn’t find it sexy. I find it sexy because I was always a builder, I always knew how to build on time, on budget.”
The proposal features two key components: an injection of funding for new investments and to speed up repairs of crumbling roads and airports, as well as a streamlined permitting process that would reduce the wait time to get projects under way.
States, local governments and other project sponsors could use the grants to cover no more than 20 percent of the costs.
About $50 billion would go toward rural projects — transportation, broadband, water, waste, power, flood management and ports. That is intended to address criticism from some Republican senators that the administration’s initial emphasis on public-private partnerships would do little to help rural, GOP-leaning states.