House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday the House would tackle President Trump’s massive infrastructure proposal by passing it in a half-dozen different bills.
“We are going to break it into pieces,” Ryan said in remarks to employees at a Home Depot Store Support Center in Atlanta. “We think it’s easier to break it into pieces.”
He made his comment after a worker asked Ryan about infrastructure, and told him a story about a crumbling bridge.
Ryan told the worker the infrastructure proposal, which is a key campaign promise from President Trump, would be taken up in “five or six different bills.”
President Trump last month unveiled a $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan that would rely mostly on private, state, and local funding.
At Home Depot, Ryan told reporters the House would begin considering infrastructure legislation next week, “and move into the summer passing these bills.”
The bills would include legislation to streamline the process for permitting and building infrastructure.
He said a second “downpayment” bill would provide the $200 billion in federal funding that President Trump wants to use to leverage the balance of his plan through additional private and local funding.
Ryan described an upcoming bill to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration as another of the infrastructure bills, as well as measure to reauthorize water infrastructure improvements.
