The long-awaited infrastructure plan will be published by the White House on Monday, and is aimed at overhauling U.S. public works that will cost $1.5 trillion. The four main goals of Trump’s plan is to generate $1.5 trillion for an infrastructure proposal, streamline the permitting process down to two years, invest in rural infrastructure projects and advance workforce training.
“The current system is fundamentally broken and it’s broken in two different ways, we are under-investing in our infrastructure, and we have a permitting process that takes so long that even when funds are adequate, it can take a decade to build critical infrastructure,” a senior administration official told reporters in a Saturday phone call.
Direct federal investment of $200 billion for the package has been confirmed by the Trump administration, which will be included in the White House pending blueprint for fiscal 2019.
According to The Hill, half of the federal seed money would go toward an incentive program to match financing from state and local governments investing in rebuilding projects, while a quarter of the appropriations would be used for rural projects in the form of block grants to states, so governors may decide where to invest.
Those block grants will be divided in three parts, from which $20 billion will be for “transformative programs”, meant for new projects rather than rehabilitation of old infrastructure, then another $20 billion to expand the use of loans and private activity bonds, a common tool used to fund infrastructure projects. The last $10 billion would go into a “capital financing fund.”
The Hill reported that the allotted $200 billion comes from cuts within the impending White House budget. An official did not detail where specific spending reductions in the budget came from, but said the administration made cuts where “infrastructure funds haven’t been spent efficaciously,” providing Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery grants and transit funds as examples.
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