Ed Rendell: Trump’s ‘Joke’ Infrastructure Plan Is a ‘Cruel Hoax’

Tuesday on WBUR Radio’s “Here and Now,” former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) said President Donald Trump’s infrastructure plan was a “joke.”

Rendell said, “It’s a joke. There is no plan. The American Society of Civil Engineers says to get our infrastructure back to ‘fair’ condition, we have to spend $2 trillion in the next 10 years above what we’ve been spending. The Trump plan only devotes $200 billion, that’s $20 billion a year, to the infrastructure revitalization — that’s 10 percent of what the American Society of Civil Engineers recommends. And they’re not doing it with new revenue, they’re doing it by cutting other parts of the budget. So we’re not even sure that they’ll get to $20 billion a year on a yearly basis. So it’s a joke.”

He added, “The president during the campaign said he was gonna spend $1 trillion on infrastructure. He’s not doing that, he’s spending 20 percent of that. The president said he was gonna do big projects. There’s practically no money in there for big projects. It’s a joke. They can spend $341 million giving a tax cut to real estate developers — which they just did — and yet only spend $200 billion on infrastructure that affects every American. It’s a cruel hoax.”

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