“Private companies should fund, build, and run more of the basic infrastructure of American life.”
That’s how the Washington Post sums up a key tenet of the Trump administration’s thinking on infrastructure, in an article Wednesday that outlines the White House’s push to privatize “some public assets such as airports, bridges, highway rest stops, and other facilities.”
President Donald Trump’s budget proposal, released Tuesday, calls for spending roughly $200 billion over 10 years to spur at least $800 billion in state, local, and private infrastructure investment.
“Trump advisers said that to entice state and local governments to sell some of their assets, the administration is considering paying them a bonus,” the Post reported. “The proceeds of the sales would then go to other infrastructure projects.”
The plan also calls for speeding up the regulatory review process, with a fact sheet (pdf) from the White House describing the current environmental review and permitting process as “fragmented, inefficient, and unpredictable.” And as Bloomberg reported: “One of the more controversial elements of Trump’s outline was reducing the tolling restriction on interstate highways to attract private investment. Trump also supports allowing the private sector to construct, operate, and maintain interstate rest areas, according to the plan.”
The Post continued:
But as attorney and Public Banking Institute founder Ellen Brown warned in a recent column: “Moving assets off the government’s balance sheet by privatizing them looks attractive to politicians concerned with this year’s bottom line, but it’s a bad deal for the public. Decades from now, people will still be paying higher tolls for the sake of Wall Street profits on an asset that could have belonged to them all along.”
Furthermore, Brown wrote:
Indeed, congressional Democrats, who have called for large-scale infrastructure investment, criticized Trump’s proposal as a “sleight of hand,” decrying its “fuzzy math” and deep cuts to other key initiatives including Amtrak, public housing revitalization, and the TIGER program, which awards grants to states for transportation projects.
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Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) called Trump’s plan “crap,” while Caroline Behringer, a spokeswoman for House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, said in a statement: “Trump’s budget would take existing money from cities and states that pays for roads, bridges, and transit, and would give it to billionaires and corporate interests…[W]e need a real, bipartisan plan, not tax cuts disguised as an infrastructure plan.”
Infrastructure is not the only area where the Trump budget prioritizes privatization. As Common Dreams reported, the administration is also seeking to cut public education programs in order to promote voucher and charter school initiatives, while some critics warned that under Trump’s budget, “the slow roll to [Veterans Affairs] privatization is underway.”