Tom Joad
11-16-2016, 04:10 PM
I'll be watching this one real close. Trump is going to have to take on the Republican establishment to get this one through.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/trumps-infrastructure-challenge-to-republicans/507656/
Whether the president-elect gets his way on money for roads and bridges will say a lot about who runs Washington in 2017.
During his victory speech last week, President-elect Donald Trump devoted more than a single sentence to just one piece of policy. It wasn’t a border wall or immigration, nor trade, nor even Obamacare. Instead, the very first specific promise Trump made upon claiming the presidency was to follow through on the one issue that united him and Hillary Clinton—and divided Republicans in Washington: infrastructure.
“We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals,” the president-elected pledged. “We’re going to rebuild our infrastructure, which will become, by the way, second to none. And we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it.”
Trump’s bigger challenge will be to persuade congressional Republicans that they should revisit an idea they belittled as pork-barrel spending when a Democratic president-elect, Barack Obama, proposed it as his first priority eight years ago. Whether House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell accede to Trump’s demand—and whether he relents if they don’t—will go a long way toward revealing just who is in charge of the new Republican-dominated political order in Washington.
In the week since the election, Ryan and McConnell have said quite a bit about working with Trump to repeal the Affordable Care Act, secure the border, and reduce regulations. They have said nothing at all about infrastructure.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/trumps-infrastructure-challenge-to-republicans/507656/
Whether the president-elect gets his way on money for roads and bridges will say a lot about who runs Washington in 2017.
During his victory speech last week, President-elect Donald Trump devoted more than a single sentence to just one piece of policy. It wasn’t a border wall or immigration, nor trade, nor even Obamacare. Instead, the very first specific promise Trump made upon claiming the presidency was to follow through on the one issue that united him and Hillary Clinton—and divided Republicans in Washington: infrastructure.
“We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals,” the president-elected pledged. “We’re going to rebuild our infrastructure, which will become, by the way, second to none. And we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it.”
Trump’s bigger challenge will be to persuade congressional Republicans that they should revisit an idea they belittled as pork-barrel spending when a Democratic president-elect, Barack Obama, proposed it as his first priority eight years ago. Whether House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell accede to Trump’s demand—and whether he relents if they don’t—will go a long way toward revealing just who is in charge of the new Republican-dominated political order in Washington.
In the week since the election, Ryan and McConnell have said quite a bit about working with Trump to repeal the Affordable Care Act, secure the border, and reduce regulations. They have said nothing at all about infrastructure.