Trump’s long-awaited infrastructure plan expected to drop in January

The public could get its first look at President Trump’s long-awaited infrastructure plan when the calendar turns.

A senior administration official has said Trump intends to release his plan in January, according to Bloomberg. He had made a campaign promise to introduce an infrastructure proposal worth $1 trillion in his first 100 days, and his administration later said they would have a plan ready by the third quarter. However, it still has yet to be released.

The plan would allocate a minimum of $200 billion in federal funds over 10 years meant to spur states, local governments and private companies to spend a minimum of $800 billion. Federal funds would be divided between money for states and towns, block grants for rural parts of the country, lending programs and money for “transformational” projects like high-speed trains.

Overall, the plan aims to move funding responsibility from the federal level to the state and local levels, but some mayors and governors are already resisting, saying they are doing enough and require more help from the federal government.

Trump had previously made plans to form an infrastructure advisory council led by developers Richard LeFrak and Steve Roth, but he abandoned this idea over the summer shortly after CEOs on his American Manufacturing Council resigned in protest over Trump’s response to a neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville that turned violent.

Republican Ray LaHood, who served as Transportation Secretary under President Obama and is now co-chairman of the bipartisan infrastructure group Building America’s Future, voiced skepticism about the plan’s prospects.

“If they’d taken up infrastructure, we’d have a bill today and have the money to fund it,” he said, according to Bloomberg. “Nothing happened this year, so the prospects of anything happening next year I think are pretty slim.” [Bloomberg] – Eddie Small