The deadly derailment of an Amtrak train near Tacoma, Wash., last week prompted a tweet from Donald Trump. The accident, the president wrote, “shows more than ever why our soon to be submitted infrastructure plan must be approved quickly. Seven trillion dollars spent in the Middle East while our roads, bridges, tunnels, railways (and more) crumble! Not for long!”
Never mind that the high-speed train was traveling on brand-new tracks and appears to have been going too fast when it crashed down onto Interstate 5, this was too good an opportunity for the president to tout a marquee agenda item that had gained little traction. Neither the GOP leadership in Congress nor Trump’s own team in the White House had put much of a priority on infrastructure in 2017.
“If we thought it was the time to release an infrastructure bill, we would release an infrastructure bill,” Gary Cohn, the director of the president’s National Economic Council, told the New York Times in June. “We just can’t keep throwing stuff on Congress. We actually need them to get legislation done. And as they start getting legislation done, we’ll come back with infrastructure.”
But with the Obamacare repeal (a failure) and tax reform (a success) done, the White House is planning to release an infrastructure proposal in the first few weeks of the new year. Trump has met several times in the last month with congressional leaders about finalizing a framework.
Trump has a personal interest in the issue. “He really understands building stuff,” says Pennsylvania’s Bill Shuster, the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, who met with Trump in the Oval Office on December 11. “The guy’s a builder, he knows how to build things on time and under budget.”
According to White House officials, the forthcoming plan will expand on Trump’s executive orders speeding up the permitting process for projects, and the president hopes for something on the order of $1 trillion in total investment. This includes $220 billion in federal spending for roads, bridges, and similar projects, with the balance coming from investment by state, local, and private interests.
The White House plans to introduce statutory changes to how states and local jurisdictions receive money for projects. A White House aide says the federal government should be “getting out of the business of picking and choosing projects.” Local governments will have to put up their own funds before Washington chips in. Projects will also be required to have maintenance schedules and cost guarantees. The president views this incentive system as a check on local politicians looking for federal dollars: If elected leaders are going to raise taxes or user fees for new projects on their own, they will be more discerning about what infrastructure projects they pursue.
What’s not clear is who is heading the administration’s effort on infrastructure. Elaine Chao, the secretary of transportation, has the regulatory aspects of such spending within her purview. A veteran of previous Republican administrations and wife of Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, Chao has made public appearances beside the president throughout the year to tout Trump’s infrastructure plans. Privately, though, she has expressed doubts that Congress will pass any major legislation.
“She isn’t driving the train, or the bus, or the car, or the truck,” says Peter DeFazio, Oregon Democrat and ranking member on the House Transportation Committee.
Within the West Wing, the lead is taken by D. J. Gribbin, a Department of Transportation alumnus who has also worked in the finance sector. Gribbin represents what DeFazio castigates as the “Heritage Foundation” outlook, which prizes private investment over government funding. Yet Gribbin’s view is in line with the conservative Republicans in Congress who blasted stimulus spending on infrastructure during the Obama administration and won’t be enthusiastic about a Trump bill that goes heavy on federal outlays.
“We like ideas that leverage private-sector dollars,” says House speaker Paul Ryan. “There’s a lot of things you can do in the infrastructure space that we think we can leverage a big private-sector infrastructure [investment].”
Bill Shuster insists that any big infrastructure bill has to be bipartisan and that he told the president as much. But DeFazio says there’s no appetite among Democrats for a market-oriented infrastructure bill, which is what he suspects Gribbin and the White House will release in January.
What many on Capitol Hill are frustrated about is the lack of specificity from the administration on its plans. Gary Cohn, for instance, told the bipartisan “Problem Solvers” caucus of moderate House members that a gas-tax increase could help pay for new federal infrastructure spending—something DeFazio would love to see but is anathema to most Republicans. The White House says the gas tax is on the table and won’t elaborate on what other ideas the president is considering.
The ultimate goal, administration officials say, is to pass a big infrastructure bill by early summer. But Ryan poured cold water on the idea of a massive legislative package in 2018. “I think it’s probably a series of bills that culminate in a comprehensive effort,” said the Wisconsin Republican. “I’m agnostic on the packaging.”
The White House insists everyone will be ready to hit the ground running when Congress returns in the new year—even though leaders on the Hill are unenthusiastic about infrastructure and say the president has been vague on what he wants. “We have done more advance work on this issue than anything we’ve done in this White House,” says one administration official. “We don’t want people to be surprised by this.”
Michael Warren is a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
