During a weekend GOP strategy session at Camp David, Donald Trump threw cold water on an infrastructure plan his top aides have been working on for months and that already faced steep odds of passage given GOP resistance to spending any money that might actually improve the lives of average Americans. The Washington Post's Josh Dawsey writes:
President Trump expressed misgivings about his administration’s infrastructure plan Friday at Camp David, telling Republican leaders that building projects through public-private partnerships is unlikely to work — and that it may be better for the government to pursue a different path.
Then on Saturday morning, Gary Cohn, the president’s chief economic adviser, delivered a detailed proposal on infrastructure and public-private partnerships that seemed to contradict the president. He said the administration hoped $200 billion in new federal government spending would trigger almost $1 trillion in private spending and local and state spending, according to people familiar with his comments. Cohn seemed to present the plan as the administration’s approach, although the president had suggested such an approach might not work.
Sorry, Gary, that $200 billion in spending has already been spent in the GOP's big $1.5 trillion tax giveaway to the rich and corporate America. Good luck getting Republican lawmakers to spend money on the bridges, roads and highways that mere working-class folks use on the daily.
Trump reportedly started voicing misgivings about the efficacy of using public-private partnerships for an infrastructure bill back in September of last year.
Trump’s repeated complaints about the effectiveness of public-private partnerships have infuriated and surprised some administration aides who have worked on the plans for months. They were hoping to propose a package of infrastructure goals later this month, though that timetable remains fluid.
Democrats have often said they would support more infrastructure spending, and many labor unions have also said they would like to work with Trump on these plans. But they have remained wary of how Trump would plan to pay for any of the projects, and those questions appear to remain unresolved.
If there was any good news from the weekend, it's that Republicans appear, at least momentarily, to be shying away from new efforts to repeal/replace the Affordable Care Act or cut social safety net programs like Social Security and Medicare. Though Paul Ryan would love to squeeze the lifeblood out of those programs, Mitch McConnell, with his one-seat majority, has little appetite to make any of his vulnerable senators potentially walk the plank on that vote.
There was little talk about repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act or launching a campaign to curb entitlement spending — issues that are now unlikely to come up legislatively in 2018.
Anyway, it's theoretically possible that Republicans could eke out an infrastructure bill but it seems more implausible than anything. All those so-called deficit hawks who suspended their supposed mores to vote for a $1.5 trillion kickback to their wealthiest benefactors will suddenly rediscover their passion for reining in spending—especially the type of spending that won't immediately fill their campaign coffers.