President Donald Trump’s proposed $4.1 trillion federal budget for fiscal year 2018 includes an infrastructure plan to “support $1 trillion in private/public infrastructure investment,” the budget states.
“The President has consistently emphasized that the Nation’s infrastructure needs to be rebuilt and modernized to create jobs, maintain America’s economic competitiveness, and connect communities and people to more opportunities,” the budget, entitled “A New Foundation for American Greatness,” states. “Unfortunately, the United States no longer has the best infrastructure in the world.”
“According to the World Economic Forum, the United States’ overall infrastructure places 12th, with countries such as Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, and France ranking higher,” the budget states. “If the United States continues to underinvest in infrastructure, we will continue to fall further and further behind our peers and our economic performance will suffer.”
The goal of the infrastructure plan is “to seek long-term reforms on how infrastructure projects are regulated, funded, delivered, and maintained.”
“President Trump has sent Congress a $4.1-trillion spending plan that proposes to eliminate the deficit in a decade while protecting Social Security and Medicare,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “But to achieve balance, Trump is seeking sharp cuts in a variety of programs for the poor, including Medicaid, food stamps and disability payments.”
The Times predicted that the budget would “set off months of debate in Congress” and said even the GOP is “wary of the political dangers of Trump’s draconian cuts.”
“Even in skeletal form, the infrastructure document was several times longer than the one-page tax overhaul plan that the administration laid out last month,” Politico reported.
“Democrats were also quick to note Tuesday that Trump’s budget would provide just $5 billion for the effort in fiscal 2018, with no details about where the money would go — or how it would be paid for,” Politico reported.
Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) called the infrastructure plan a “sham” that relies less on “federal balance sheets” and more on “unidentified incentives for Wall Street investors to invest in transportation.”
But Sen. John Thune (R-SD), chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said Trump’s budget takes the “longterm view” on infrastructure.
“Federal funding is part of the equation and, as the initiative lays out, in the appropriate circumstances we also need to leverage private-sector capital and reform regulations that inflate project costs,” Thune said.
A Fact Sheet on the infrastructure plan states:
The President’s target of $1 trillion in infrastructure investment will be funded through a combination of new Federal funding, incentivized non-Federal funding, and newly prioritized and expedited projects.
While this Administration proposes additional funding for infrastructure, we will structure that funding to incentivize additional non-Federal funding, reduce the cost associated with accepting Federal dollars, and ensure Federal funds are leveraged such that the end result is at least $1 trillion in total infrastructure spending.