Money for MAGA: Fossil Fuels Can Pay for Trump’s Infrastructure Agenda without a Tax Increase, Part 1

Almost everybody agrees that President Trump’s $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan, released on February 12, is a good idea—except for two little things: Nobody seems to agree on how much the federal government should actually spend, nor do folks agree on how much the deficit-ridden feds can actually pay for any new infrastructure.

The immediate headline in The New York Daily News was typical of the Main Stream Media instant reaction: “Trump’s $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan kicks most of cost burdens to states, cities.”  As the article notes, “The plan includes just $200 billion in federal dollars . . . The reduced federal spending is a departure from the lead fiscal role Uncle Sam typically plays in infrastructure.”  For their part, governors and mayors are mostly comfortable with Trump’s idea of federal/state/local/private-sector partnerships, but they want more than more than a 1:7.5 match—that is, more than $200 billion—from the feds.

In the meantime, the loyal opposition in Congress seemed ill-inclined to go along with any aspect of the Trump proposal; in fact, earlier, on February 8, House Democrats released their own infrastructure plan, which called for substantially more federal spending (and also rejects Trump’s ideas for streamlining the regulatory permit process).  In the meantime, MSM pundits have been pounding away; The New York Times‘ Paul Krugman, for example, labeled the Trump plan “fraudulent…a scam…nothing…made up.” And that was just in the first two paragraphs; later, he referred to it as a “dog’s breakfast of a proposal that everyone knows won’t go anywhere.”

We might note that unlike last year’s tax bill, the Trump infrastructure plan will need 60 votes in the Senate to get past a filibuster; since the GOP has just 51 votes, that means nine Democrats will be needed. And yet as The New York Times observed, “The odds of such a bipartisan effort coming together in the current political environment are long. White House officials said the new spending would be offset by unspecified cuts elsewhere in the budget, which are all but certain to be roundly criticized by Democrats.”