Donald Trump likes to deliver big promises on infrastructure. Delivering an actual infrastructure plan, though, is a different matter. (Sound familiar?) Trump’s problem is that while strengthening the nation’s infrastructure would be very popular with voters, who would benefit from the improved transit and water systems and new schools and the millions of jobs that would come from repairing or building all of that, Republican politicians are not interested in making rich people pay for any of that. (Trump, you may recall, is a Republican politician.) Also, Trump’s strong suit has not exactly been delivering workable plans to fulfill his positive campaign promises. He’s good at signing orders and bills undoing things President Obama did, but he’s not so good at coming up with his own policies, from health care to infrastructure.
And so Trump keeps talking about infrastructure in his speeches:
But at this point, White House spokesman Sean Spicer has only said the Trump Administration is in the “beginning phases” of putting together an infrastructure plan – which means there is no legislative text ready for action in the Congress.
There have been indications that any infrastructure bill coming out of the Trump White House will be less about investing in America and more about gutting environmental regulations and selling roads and bridges off to corporations, but at this point even that is extremely hazy, and while Republicans seem content about it, Democrats are getting impatient:
“Every conversation or any interaction I have had with the president has been infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure,” House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California said at a news conference last week. “Where's the bill? Show us the bill.”
Democrats would love a real infrastructure bill that put people to work repairing or replacing crumbling bridges, building tunnels to improve transit in congested areas—you could list important projects pretty much all day. But with Trump’s popularity and credibility in the basement, Democrats don’t seem like they plan to roll over and gratefully accept a massive privatizing giveaway to the wealthy. And Trump—or at least some of the people around him—may realize that continuing to talk vaguely about a popular idea serves his ego more as an applause line than unveiling a disappointing betrayal of an actual plan would. Don’t hold your breath on a solid infrastructure plan that Congress could vote on, in other words.