Trump’s $1 Trillion Infrastructure Plan Has New Reason for Skepticism
Date Posted: July 29, 2017
Posted In: Ideas, News,
From CityLab: A lawsuit filed Tuesday against President Trump alleges that his infrastructure advisory council—tasked with hammering out the details of his $1 trillion plan to rebuild roads, bridges, and waterways—was convened illegally, in violation of federal disclosure law.
It’s another reason for skepticism around Trump’s much-touted, little seen “great national infrastructure program,” marketed as a jobs-creating New Deal for 2017. The list of reasons for concern is mounting:
“Plan” is a generous term
What is known about the $1 trillion plan, insofar as one exists, is that it leans heavily on partnerships between public and private actors. A Trump campaign document authored by billionaire-investor-cum-Secretary-of-Commerce Wilbur Ross outlines a vague strategy to leverage $200 billion in federal funds to generate an additional $800 billion from private investors, mostly by offering them massive tax credits.
Meanwhile, the same budget blueprint calls for a 13 percent cut to the Department of Transportation funding. It’s confusing how the president plans to build infrastructure while cutting off the agency responsible for most of it. How does that much private capital get squeezed out of relatively few federal dollars?