The Trump administration is determined to roll out a major infrastructure plan as soon as Monday, and the basic form of that plan is a foregone conclusion: it’ll rely mostly on “public-private partnerships,” AKA privatizing American infrastructure and pushing state and local governments to pay for things Trump and congressional Republicans won’t allocate money for. But that’s not what Americans want infrastructure investment to look like—and even Trump seems to know it’s not good enough:
Gary Cohn, President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser, ended a late January discussion with the president believing he’d finally convinced him that there’s no room in the federal budget for a massive infrastructure spending bill.
Reluctantly, Trump agreed: States and private companies would have to shoulder most of the $1.5 trillion plan Trump had promised the American public.
But then Trump waffled again, forcing Cohn’s deputy, D.J. Gribbin, who had been working on the plan, to delay its release, which had been tentatively timed around Trump’s Jan. 30 State of the Union address. That’s according to two individuals and an administration official familiar with the talks.
Trump wants public works that he can put his name on and claim credit for. Americans want truly public infrastructure that doesn’t involve paying jacked up tolls to ensure a private company’s profit. But that’s not the Republican way in 2017: they’re not willing to pay for bridges that aren’t crumbling and rail to connect cities, or any of the nation’s other pressing needs. Having passed their giant tax scam, they’re now using its effects on the federal debt to argue once again that the United States can’t afford to invest in its future. And Trump, who demanded the tax scam, will ultimately let his advisers scam him into believing he’s getting something like the infrastructure plan of his ill-informed, narcissistic dreams.