Trump is aiming to release his infrastructure plan in early January

President Donald Trump plans to keep pushing his legislative agenda in 2018 by releasing his long-promised infrastructure proposal in early January, a senior administration official said.

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Trump promised during his campaign to introduce a $1 trillion proposal within his first 100 days in office, then the administration said there’d be a plan by the third quarter. That didn’t happen after the failed attempt to overhaul health care and the ongoing tax effort.

The president aims to release a detailed document of principles, rather than a drafted bill, for upgrading roads, bridges, airports and other public works before the Jan. 30 State of the Union address, said the administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the details aren’t public.

The White House plan is essentially complete and Trump recently reviewed it, the official said. It calls for allocating at least $200 billion in federal funds over 10 years to spur at least $800 billion in spending by states, localities and the private sector.

The plan would put the federal dollars in four areas: cash for states and localities, with preference for entities that generate their own funding as well; formula block grants for rural areas; federal lending programs; and money for “transformational” work.

The guiding principle of the plan is to shift responsibility for funding from the federal government to states and localities -- which own or control most assets -- by providing incentives for them to generate their own sustainable funding sources and work with the private sector.

The White House official said it would have been too difficult to combine infrastructure with the tax bill. The plan now is to give Congress a blueprint for a bill and allow the details -- including funding -- to be negotiated in a bipartisan way, the official said.

Bloomberg News
Infrastructure
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