Infrastructure growth may not match promises
GOP comments on spending suggest a more limited approach
WASHINGTON — It’s not at all clear that President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to spend massively on infrastructure are going to unfold as he promised.
Trump made rebuilding the nation’s aging roads, bridges and airports very much part of his job-creation strategy in the presidential race. But lobbyists have begun to fear that there won’t be an infrastructure proposal at all, or at least not the grand plan they’d been led to expect.
From the day he entered the presidential race to the moment he declared victory, Trump pledged an infrastructure renewal. He cited decaying bridges, rutted roads and aging airports like New York’s LaGuardia that he said reminded him of the “Third World.”
Trump or his campaign also mentioned schools, hospitals, pipelines, water treatment plants and the electrical grid as part of a job-creation strategy that would make the U.S. “second to none.” It was a rare area in which House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats hoped for common ground with the presidentelect. The possibility of a major infrastructure spending plan is one of several factors that have fueled the recent run-up in stock prices. But did he mean it? Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tried to tamp down expectations last week, telling reporters he wants to avoid “a $1 trillion stimulus.” And Reince Priebus, who will be Trump’s chief of staff, said in a radio interview that the new administration will focus in its first nine months with other issues like health care and rewriting tax laws. He sidestepped questions about the infrastructure plan.
In a post-election interview with The New York Times, Trump himself seemed to back away, saying infrastructure won’t be a “core” part of the first few years of his administration. But he said there will still be “a very large-scale infrastructure bill.”
He acknowledged that he didn’t realize during the campaign that New Deal-style proposals to put people to work building infrastructure might conflict with his party’s smallgovernment philosophy.
“That’s not a very Republican thing — I didn’t even know that, frankly,” he said.
Since the election, Trump has backed away — or at least suggested flexibility — on a range of issues that energized his supporters during the campaign, including his promises to prosecute Hillary Clinton, pull out of the Paris climate change accord and reinstitute waterboarding for detainees.
Trump transition officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
“We’re worried,” said Brian Turmail of the Associated General Contractors of America, which represents more than 26,000 construction companies.
“Are we hearing signs that people just don’t know what the plan is?” he asked. “Or signs that people don’t want any kind of plan? We don’t know the answer.”