With five of President Trump’s cabinet members on hand to testify, Senate Commerce Committee chairman John Thune said a vast overhaul of U.S. infrastructure — a Trump initiative — should be a legislative cakewalk. “Both sides can come together on this, and it can happen this year.”
Instead, Democrats on the committee, beginning with the senior Democrat, Bill Nelson of Florida, said Trump’s proposal of $1.5 trillion in spending was a souffle of wishful thinking that relied heavily on someone else’s money. “There’s no plan on how you are going to pay for it,” said Nelson. Added Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, “This is just smoke and mirrors.” Under Trump’s plan, the federal government would provide a small share — $200 billion — of the $1.5 trillion, with states, localities, and private investors expected to provide more than 80 percent of the total.
Rural America would get a quarter of the federal money, $50 billion, mostly in block grants to states. Governors would decide which local projects to back, from highways to water projects and power lines. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue headlined high-speed internet as the rural springboard to growth, for schools and businesses in town and for farmers in their fields who want to use Big Data to boost yields and reduce costs through the precise placement of seed, fertilizer, and pesticides. “How do we pay for it?” he asked rhetorically. “That’s where we all come together … just get it done for the American people.”
“Five of our incredible @Cabinet Secretaries are testifying on the Hill this morning on the need to rebuild our Nation’s crumbling infrastructure. We need to build FAST & we need to build for our FUTURE,” tweeted Trump. “Thank you @SenateCommerce for hosting this hearing!”
Testimony by a cabinet member before Congress is not common, so having five of them — Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, and Perdue — present was extraordinary, as Thune said in opening the hearing. “This is not just a another highway bill.”
When skeptical Democratic senators faulted the administration plan as lacking in detail, Chao said it represented a willingness to work with Congress. “We are agnostic” on funding mechanisms; everything is on the table,” she said. “We sent [a set of] principles instead of legislative language” as an “open show of cooperation” with lawmakers.
At one point, Chao suggested pension funds could be a source of infrastructure investments. Ross said states could sell public property to raise money in order to match federal funds.
Nebraska Republican Deb Fischer told Perdue that more specifics were needed on the formula for allocating rural money. The government, she also said, has a variety of definitions of “rural.” Perdue said, “50,000 to 75,000 [population] is a good cut-off.”
The nonpartisan Penn Wharton Business Model says, “Most of the grant programs contained in the infrastructure plan fail to provide strong incentives to invest additional money in public infrastructure.” In a report in late February, it estimated that “investment across all levels of government, including partnerships with the private sector, would increase between $20 billion to $230 billion, including the $200 billion federal investment.”
To watch a video of the Senate Commerce Committee hearing or to read testimony by the cabinet secretaries, click here.