Trump Eyes a Massive $2 Trillion Infrastructure Deal

Plus, a 'collision course' with Congress over spending

Congress Is Back. Can It Get Anything Done?

Now that Congress is back from its two-week recess, lawmakers will have to tackle some looming budget-related issues, including spending levels for fiscal 2020, a stalled disaster aid package and a potential infrastructure deal.

A 2020 Spending

Lawmakers will need to agree to raise defense and non-defense spending for next year or face the prospect of steep automatic cuts set to take effect under a 2011 law. But the Trump administration and Democratic leaders are more than $100 billion apart in their overall non-defense spending plans for next year, Roll Call reports, with a chart to illustrate the various proposals released thus far:

Against that backdrop, staff-level talks between Congress and the White House have reportedly made little progress. The Hill says that President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are “on a collision course” regarding the talks. “Trump has given the GOP leader some time to work with Democrats but doesn’t want the talks to drag on all year and lead to an agreement that would increase spending — and the budget deficit,” The Hill’s Alexander Bolton writes.

Rather than raise spending, the White House is reportedly ready to accept a stopgap measure that would keep spending for all of 2020 at 2019 levels, with supplemental legislation to boost the military. McConnell and other lawmakers prefer to reach an agreement on spending and avoid a stopgap bill, in part to allow appropriators to adjust specific funding levels for next year.

Democrats, meanwhile, have been pushing for higher non-defense spending, on par with increases on the defense side. House Democrats plan to forge ahead with the first of the 12 annual spending bills required to fund the government, starting with the potentially contentious Labor-Health and Human Services-Education bill. Democrats reportedly hope that they can gain some leverage in the spending talks by forging ahead with their appropriations bills.

But with little sign of fast progress, the White House’s patience may be wearing thin, Bolton reports — and “White House officials are leery of where the talks may lead, noting that the last bipartisan deal reached in early 2018 boosted spending by $300 billion over two years.”

Can Congress Fix Its Disaster-Relief Disaster?

A bill that would deliver more than $13 billion to areas affected by wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes and other natural disasters has been hung up as the result of a contentious dispute between Trump and Democrats over aid to Puerto Rico. The president has criticized Puerto Rican officials over their handling of relief money and has come out against providing more aid. Democrats, meanwhile, have insisted on freeing up previously appropriated funds and providing increased aid.

“Negotiations to resolve the impasse have been fitful and the outlook is uncertain,” The Washington Post’s Mike DeBonis and Erica Werner report. “There is a strong desire among lawmakers of both parties to reach a deal, but also increasingly bitter acrimony on both sides about how the dispute has played out.”

Still, lawmakers may feel a sense of urgency to get a disaster relief package done.

“Senate Republicans came back from a meeting with Trump prior to the two-week spring break with renewed optimism they’d be able to reach a deal,” Roll Call’s Paul M. Krawzak says. “Affected states like Georgia and Florida, represented by Senate Republicans, were relatively close calls for Trump in 2016. And Iowa, like other Midwest states hit hard by recent flooding, is always a presidential bellwether and one Trump needs to keep in his corner.”

Trump Dreams of a Massive $2 Trillion Infrastructure Deal: Report

Even as President Trump looks to reduce or freeze spending for next year, he is also reportedly interested in a big, bold and expensive new infrastructure plan. Axios’s Jonathan Swan reports that Trump told House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-MA) last month that he wants to spend upwards of $2 trillion building infrastructure on a grand scale all across the country.

That’s a huge increase from an earlier Trump administration proposal, which called for roughly $200 billion in federal funding, intended to seed more than $1 trillion in spending by private-public partnerships. But Trump reportedly dislikes that idea, dismissing it as “Gary’s plan” in reference to his former economic advisor, Gary Cohn.

The problem, Swan says, is that Trump’s “own party won’t let him” spend the money required to build at the Eisenhower-esque scale he wants, due to Republicans’ aversion to deficit spending and perennial refusal to raise taxes.

Democrats See an Opportunity

Along with other leading Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (NY) are scheduled to meet with Trump Tuesday to discuss a bipartisan infrastructure package. In a letter to Trump Monday ahead of the meeting, Pelosi and Schumer said that infrastructure is a priority for both parties and that they believe “there are significant majorities in both the House and Senate “ ready to act on the issue.

The Democratic leaders outlined their three priorities for an infrastructure bill:

1. It would need to be big – and paid for. In order to address “massive” unmet infrastructure needs, Pelosi and Schumer said that the plan would need to produce “substantial, new and real revenue.” They added that they looked forward to hearing Trump’s idea on how to pay for a “big and bold” package.

2. It should address a broad range of issues, including clean energy, climate change and housing. Pelosi and Schumer said the plan should “go beyond transportation” to address “broadband, water, energy, schools, housing and other initiatives,” as well as “resiliency and risk mitigation of our current infrastructure to deal with climate change.”

3. It should create millions of jobs. “A big and bold infrastructure plan must have strong Buy America, labor, and women, veteran and minority-owned business protections in any package,” Pelosi and Schumer wrote.

Finding the Money Won’t Be Easy

The biggest problem facing any infrastructure bill is cost. While Democrats have not yet defined an explicit top line, The Washington Post’s DeBonis said that $1 trillion is seen as “a bare minimum” at this point.

Politico’s Heather Caygle says that Schumer wants Trump to roll back some of the Republican tax cuts to help pay for infrastructure and won’t agree to raise the gas tax unless Trump agrees to reverse some of the 2017 cuts. But this seems like a potential deal killer, since it is “unlikely Trump would agree to renegotiate his major legislative achievement — leaving party leaders without a clear way to pay for any bipartisan infrastructure deal,” Caygle writes.

Another potential problem: The meeting will include about a dozen Democratic lawmakers, including Neal, who is actively pursuing Trump’s tax returns. Don’t be surprised if the topic of conversation wanders away from roads and bridges and toward the issues Trump cares about most. “Look, the primary purpose of that meeting is to discuss infrastructure, but I certainly wouldn’t be surprised at all if immigration comes up,” press secretary Sarah Sanders said Monday on Fox News.

Beto O’Rourke’s $5 Trillion Climate Plan

Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke released a sweeping plan Monday intended to combat climate change and achieve a zero emissions economy by 2050.

“The greatest threat we face -- which will test our country, our democracy, every single one of us -- is climate change,” O’Rourke said Monday.

Here are some of the things O’Rourke proposes to do:

  • Rejoin the Paris Agreement that President Trump withdrew from in 2017.
  • Seek legislation that would require the U.S. to remove as much greenhouse gas as it emits, with half that goal achieved by 2030.
  • Halt fossil fuel leases on federal lands.
  • Reduce methane gas leaks from existing wells.
  • Require companies to measure and disclose greenhouse gas emissions.
  • End tax breaks for fossil fuel companies. 

O’Rourke said his plan would “mobilize” $5 trillion over 10 years, leveraged by “a fully paid-for $1.5 trillion investment” by the federal government. Revenues would be raised by “structural changes to the tax code that ensure corporations and the wealthiest among us pay their fair share.” More than $1 trillion in tax incentives would spur development of new green technologies, while new and existing financial institutions would raise more than $3 trillion for the effort.

Comparing the proposal to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) Green New Deal, Tom DiChristopher of NBC News said O’Rourke’s plan “is fundamentally different because it seeks to leverage an initial government investment in order to spark private spending.”

Read O’Rourke’s proposal here.

Tweet of the Day

From Politico defense reporter Connor O’Brien:

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Poll of the Day

No shock here, but a new poll from Gallup finds that Americans are still split over the Affordable Care Act.

“The relative stability in ACA approval since 2017 stems from rigid political polarization, with more than eight in 10 Democrats consistently approving, versus roughly one in 10 Republicans,” Gallup’s Lydia Saad writes. “Most of the longer-term shifts in approval reflect variation among independents. Independents' approval has ranged from a low of 33% in November 2014 to a high of 56% in April 2017, amid Republicans' ultimately failed efforts to repeal the law.”

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