President Trump visited a union-worker training center in Richfield, Ohio, last week to talk up his infrastructure investment ideas.
The speech was part of his administration’s effort to build momentum for his plan to invest $200 billion in new federal funds over a decade to spur more than $1.5 trillion in total project spending.
Accompanied by U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, Trump told the audience that Congress would probably wait until after the mid-term elections in November before lawmakers would act on major infrastructure legislation. He indicated that the plan could be passed “in one bill or in a series of measures.”
Congress recently passed, and Trump signed, a fiscal 2018 appropriations bill that funnels more funding into transportation and other types of infrastructure, in the first such measure under a two-year agreement to hike federal project spending this year and in 2019.
Trump also touted his administration's efforts to speed up federal permitting of infrastructure projects, to move them faster into the construction phase and generate their economic and mobility benefits sooner.
Around the time of the speech, the White House also released a new fact sheet that listed highlights from Trump’s proposal. Those include using $100 billion over 10 years in an incentives program to entice additional investment from states, localities and the private sector, and $50 billion in a rural infrastructure program that would mostly go through state-directed block grants.
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Source: AASHTO Journal
