{AP} Trump struck a bipartisan tone during his State of the Union address
I’m sure there is a college newsletter somewhere that would be a better use of everybody’s time. Embarrassing.
Plenty of roadblocks, but no WALL…
SAD!
God, not “Infrastructure Week” again…
Goddamn! This “Infrastructure Week” has been going on for about 37 years now.
Sad! Bigly sad!
Trump doesn’t care about the infrastructure. It was just another elect me lie and now it’s one of SOTU garbage promises. He is for sure the kind who said anything, baby, whatever you want, anything when he was trying to get laid and then didn’t even pay for her cab home.
Democrats do care about the Infrastructure though. And so do A LOT of voters. I think we need to make it Infrastructure Week for real and hold his feet to the fire.
Tax the rich.
Roadblocks disappears.
Like the airports shutting down in NYC causing the end of the shutdown, the only thing that is going to make Trump lead on infrastructure is going to be the collapse of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Don’t hold your breath.
I suspect that government contracting regulations are among the roadblocks.
Trump’s only motivation here is to hire his buddy private contractors for all the budgeted infrastructure $billions, by-passing regular contract bidding, with him getting all the bennies associated thereby. He’s too self-centered to care about anything but himself and his material wealth as the top priority, if not ONLY priority. This is another way, another slush fund to him, to increase his personal wealth.
"On the same day, Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue laid out
what the influential business group could support — and would oppose.
Donohue said that paying for infrastructure by rescinding the tax cuts
Trump and Republicans passed in 2016 “is a nonstarter for the business
community and for many in Congress.”
This is why I hate the Chamber of Commerce. They could do so much good, but they choose to side with the greediest among them. Roads and infrastructure that would ease transporation and improve access to business? nah - we need a massive budget deficit instead.
Drump:Privitze
Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue better come to Missouri and try to sell raising our fuel tax to fund transportation. Since 1980 when the legislature passed the Hancock Amendment we the people vote no on raising our gas tax. And part of the problem is that they won’t put a straight proposal on the ballot. A couple of years ago the Republicans cut taxes on businesses and the wealthy in the spring and then asked voters to raise the gas tax, it failed. Then this last election they tried again, but it was a convoluted proposal which was also going to give some of the money raised to the MO Highway Patrol.
This is why there won’t be a major infrastructure bill as long as the GOP controls one house of Congress or the Presidency. There are only 3 ways to fund the bill: (a) raise taxes to fund it, which the GOP won’t vote for; (b) deficit fund it, which the GOP won’t go for now that they have cause the deficit to balloon; or © find offsets elsewhere, which isn’t feasible and the Democrats won’t agree.
If Trump were smart, he’d give the middle finger to conservatives and ask Pelosi for a wishlist that includes lots of badly needed infrastructure projects in all his districts; and the only string attached is that Trump gets to say it was his idea and brag about all the pork his voters are getting.
Conservative voters don’t like Republicans or conservative policies. They just hate Democrats because we hate them. But if Trump announced a plan that poured much needed jobs and stimulus into red states, they’d be more than happy to see Democrats join him. I see it every day with these people. They honestly don’t understand why Democrats oppose Trump, but also can’t figure out why Trump isn’t making it rain. Trump’s the only one who can fix that and he doesn’t have a clue.
Another fine journalistic effort from AP. No mention of other ways we might raise money. No interviewing of Democrats about the ideas they have to raise money. Follow the GOP line of reasoning, with a side of the Chamber of Commerce - one step below the NRA in it’s anti-environment, anti-citizen stance.
Keep up the mediocrity AP.
Surprising no one, the gas tax is one of the most regressive taxes in the country. The chamber of commerce would like to reduce the US to something like the old Haiti, where the rich needed off-road vehicles to navigate between their walled estates with perfectly paved driveways inside the walls.
But mostly, why is AP even pretending that trump gives a s*** about infrastructure? As De Fazio points out, they had two years to do something – anything – and bupkis. And now they want the democrats to save their butts yet again.
Even Fox News viewers favor increasing taxes on the wealthy. Donahue is speaking for the billionaire class and Fortune 500 companies only. And since better infrastructure mainly helps corporations, they should do the heavy lifting instead of mooching off the middle and lower classes.
This is stupid. It doesn’t matter who the president is… we have a chance to borrow at under 3% to pay for income producing and productivity enhancing assets. We don’t have to “pay for them.” This should have been done with a proper sized stimulus after the financial crisis. It can still be done now. I would not have expected this low interest rate opportunity to last this long but it won’t last forever.
The self answering question.