Jerk off a $2 trillion deal

Infrastructure Week dies — again

‘There wasn’t going to be a $2 trillion deal anyway,’ Republican Rep. Sam Graves said.

By KATHRYN A. WOLFE and TANYA SNYDER

So much for Infrastructure Week.

Hopes for a grand $2 trillion infrastructure deal were rapidly vanishing even before Wednesday’s White House meeting between President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats blew up in a cloud of recriminations.

One big reason: Neither party has offered a serious way to pay for one.

Not Trump, who put out a $1.5 billion proposal 15 months ago that would have laid the burden on states, cities, private investors and politically unpalatable federal budget cuts. But also not the Democratic leaders, whose 35-page plan from a year ago would rely on reversing Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy — a non-starter for the GOP.

Meanwhile, prospects House lawmakers would meet even their own target of getting an infrastructure bill onto the floor before the August recess — the unofficial deadline for achieving serious legislation before the 2020 election season consumes the Capitol — have been fading fast.

Wednesday was far from the first time one of Trump’s planned infrastructure milestones has veered off the rails. Infrastructure was, after all, the intended topic of the August 2017 news conference at which the president defended the “very fine people on both sides” of that weekend’s deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va.

But to infrastructure advocates, Wednesday’s aborted meeting was yet another letdown for hopes of a bigger federal investment in roads, bridges, tunnels, railroads and airports — not to mention schools, water supplies, broadband networks, veterans’ hospitals and all the other needs that lawmakers of both parties have mentioned among their priorities.

“Sadly, it appears political theatrics won the day,” Dave Bauer, CEO of the American Road & Transportation Builders Association, said in a statement. He urged Congress to continue to work “on the big and bold transportation infrastructure investment package that the U.S. economy, motorists and business community deserve.”

Each side quickly cast blame Wednesday, with Democrats accusing Trump of blowing up the meeting because he had no real plan to discuss.

Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) opened a House Transportation Committee hearing later Wednesday by accusing Trump of showing “that apparently he’s not very serious” about infrastructure — “unless Congress ignores its constitutional responsibility to carry out oversight of the administration.”

“If the president wants to hold good-paying jobs hostage, that’s his choice, but it certainly isn’t mine,” she said.

Trump said Democrats have foiled infrastructure’s chances by pursuing what he has called an “illegal witch hunt” investigation into his business dealings and 2016 campaign. Missouri Rep. Sam Graves, the transportation committee's top Republican, said Speaker Nancy Pelosi had instigated the confrontation when she accused Trump earlier in the day of engaging in a “cover-up.”

“I don’t really blame the president for what he did given what she said this morning,” Graves told POLITICO. “She’s throwing out outrageous allegations and then turns around and tries to play nice.”

The idea of a grand infrastructure bargain faced daunting odds anyway, even though infrastructure has repeatedly surfaced as a top Trump talking point since the eve of his presidential campaign.

“The only one to fix the infrastructure of our country is me — roads, airports, bridges,” Trump tweeted in May 2015, a month before launching his White House run. “I know how to build, pols only know how to talk!”

He proposed a $500 billion-plus cash infusion during his campaign, highlighted his infrastructure pledge during his victory speech in November 2016, and put out a $1.5 trillion blueprint in early 2018 that would have included $200 billion in new federal money, offset by cuts to existing spending.

But the White House plan never went anywhere in Congress, which then was controlled entirely by Republicans. Current and former Trump advisers have since spread the word that he never much liked the plan and might be open to a much bigger federal investment — the kind of plan Democrats could accept.

His late April meeting with Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer briefly raised hopes — at least in public — that the two sides could come together on a $2 trillion plan. But the White House quickly moved to reassure conservatives that the most obvious way of paying for an infrastructure boost was off the table: Trump was not planning to hike the federal gasoline tax, despite telling Bloomberg two years ago that “it’s something that I would certainly consider.”

Democratic leaders weren’t rushing to fill the void either, making it clear they expected Trump to offer a funding proposal before they would take the political risk of endorsing one. Instead, Pelosi said at a news conference Wednesday, “He just took a pass.”

Still, Democrats have had a long time to advance their own big-sky proposals and have little to show for it so far. Senate Democrats’ $1 trillion proposal from March 2018 has yet to receive even a committee markup in the Republican-controlled chamber, for example.

A few lawmakers have come out in favor of a gas tax hike, including House Transportation Chairman Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), while Senate Commerce Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) has said he’d be willing to consider one if Trump was publicly on board. But their parties’ leaders have yet to endorse the idea — and neither did former President Barack Obama, whose own infrastructure proposals included funding sources such as the savings from winding down wars and rhetoric about “working with Congress” on unspecified methods.

Congress is still free to pursue smaller-bore infrastructure packages, however — and Democrats said Wednesday that they plan to work with Republicans on pursuing those. For instance, DeFazio and Delaware Sen. Tom Carper, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said they will continue to work on a successor to the five-year, $305 billion highway and transit law that expires at the end of September 2020.

“While we go through this — I don’t know what to call it, this thing with the president and Nancy and Chuck — the serious work that needs to be done is being done,” Carper said.

Such a bill — the kind Congress passes every few years — wouldn’t match the rhetoric of Trump’s campaign proposals, which called for a “bold, visionary plan. … in the proud tradition of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.” But it would represent some progress.

Graves, the Missouri Republican, said he is on board with the traditional approach as well.

“That charade that Schumer and Pelosi are playing is one thing, but Peter [DeFazio] and I are going to continue to work on this,” Graves said. “There wasn’t going to be a $2 trillion deal anyway.”