Key aide seems to contradict Trump on infrastructure plan
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump expressed Friday at Camp David misgivings about his administration’s infrastructure plan, telling Republican leaders that building projects through public-private partnerships is unlikely to work and that it may be better for the government to pursue a different path.
Then, on Saturday morning, Gary Cohn, the president’s chief economic adviser, delivered a detailed proposal on infrastructure and public-private partnerships that seemed to contradict the president. He said the administration hoped $200 billion in new federal government spending would trigger almost $1 trillion in private spending and local and state spending, according to people familiar with his comments. Cohn seemed to present the plan as the administration’s approach, although the president had suggested such an approach might not work.
The seemingly contradictory statements, made within 24 hours of each other, show the uncertainty of the administration’s approach to its top legislative priority in 2018: building roads, bridges, highways. Trump and his White House have been determined to pitch an infrastructure plan in 2018, despite Republican misgivings about the cost, a rapidly rising deficit and a preference to consider others matters first.
White House officials and Hill aides confirmed the president’s comments. Another White House official briefed on the comments said Trump was musing aloud and the administration still planned to still pursue public-private partnerships for infrastructure. This person, though, said Trump had continually expressed skepticism behind the scenes about such a plan.
Trump and Cohn have had a rocky relationship after the economic adviser criticized the president’s comments about white-supremacist riots in Charlottesville, Va. Several White House advisers have said recently that the former Goldman Sachs banker may exit. Asked about that Saturday, Trump pulled Cohn up to a news conference stage and asked if he was staying. The economic adviser said yes.
“Gary, hopefully, will be staying for a long time,” Trump said. “Now, if he leaves, I’m going to say: ‘I’m very happy that he left.’ OK? All right?” “I’m happy,” Cohn said. Republicans are loath to spend $1 trillion on infrastructure, as the deficit is expected to grow considerably after the tax plan passed in December. Trump did not specifically delineate how he would pay for the projects without the partnerships.
White House and legislative leaders said the weekend was largely marked by bonhomie. Trump had clashed with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., earlier this year and had been at times critical of House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis.
Trump “unloaded” on former White House strategist Steve Bannon, to the pleasure of McConnell and others, and criticized a tell-all book on his administration from author Michael Wolff, saying the author barely knew him and had made up large parts of the story.
There was little talk about repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act or launching a campaign to curb entitlement spending. Trump had said he wanted to return to health care early in 2018, but he has instead told advisers in recent weeks that he can sell repealing the individual mandate. Top officials have also convinced him there is no path to repealing the signature law.
Trump has also decided that pursuing cuts to entitlement spending in 2018 is not a good bid for him, and he left it out of public comments, advisers said.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen briefed legislators on what the administration wanted in border security in exchange for a deal on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and there was a consensus that it needed to happen before March, when the deadline set by the White House expires.