IT’S NOT MY PROBLEM
Meh on own infrastructure ‘plan’ And Trump’s $1.5 trillion push looks like mirage
PRESIDENT TRUMP outlined his long-promised and long-awaited infrastructure plan Monday — and seemed oddly non-committal to it.
“If you want it badly, you’re going to get it,” Trump told state and local officials during a meeting at the White House announcing the plan’s unveiling. “And if you don’t want it, that’s OK with me too.”
Billed as a $1.5 trillion plan, it only includes $200 billion in federal money, leaving state and local governments largely on the hook for the rest of the money.
The commander-in-chief sent an unenthusiastic message to Congress about passing one of his chief campaign pledges.
“If for any reason they don’t want to support it, hey, that’s going to be up to them,” Trump said of Congress.
The plan says the $200 billion in federal money — which would come from cuts made elsewhere — will spur as much as $1.5 trillion to $1.7 trillion in development over the next 10 years.
He indicated the massive plan to replace the nation’s “crumbling infrastructure” didn’t matter as much as tax reforms or a boost to the Pentagon’s budget.
“This is of great importance, but it’s not nearly in that category,” he said of the infrastructure plan. “Because the states will have to do it themselves if we don’t do it. But I would like to help the states out.”
Some local leaders are concerned Uncle Sam isn’t coughing up enough, however, to fund highways, water systems and other public works.
“We all would have liked to have seen more of a money investment across the country in infrastructure,” said Carlo Scissura, president and CEO of the New York Building Congress, a construction and engineering trade group.
“Our hope is that a bipartisan Senate will come back and say, ‘We need more of a money investment.’ ”
Democrats blasted the infra-