Trump’s infrastructure team to huddle with senators

President Trump’s infrastructure team will huddle with a bipartisan group of senators on Tuesday afternoon as the White House prepares to unveil its $1 trillion infrastructure package, a White House official told The Hill.

The meeting, which will take place on Capitol Hill, was requested by Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and Sen. Tom Carper (Del.), the panel’s top Democrat.

The group will discuss Trump’s two main goals for the rebuilding initiative: injecting $1 trillion worth of overall investment into the nation’s infrastructure and bringing down the lengthy permitting process to two years. The EPW Committee has held multiple hearings on both issues over the past year. 

{mosads}“The Trump administration looks forward to working with all Members of Congress who want to join us in rebuilding America,” a White House official said. 

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, told reporters Monday that his staff will also be sitting down with White House officials later this week to get more details about Trump’s infrastructure plan.

The flurry of meetings comes after Trump pitched his long-awaited infrastructure plan to GOP congressional leaders at Camp David over the weekend. The White House plans to unveil “detailed legislative principles” on the proposal later this month. 

But there were mixed signals coming out of the presidential retreat about the details of the rebuilding effort, according to The Washington Post.

Trump reportedly told Republican leaders that using public–private partnerships, which were expected to be a key part of his infrastructure bill, would not be an effective way to fund infrastructure projects, arguing a different approach may be better.

This was in contradiction to a presentation White House chief economic adviser Gary Cohn gave Saturday morning that discussed the use of public-private partnerships in the proposal, the Post reported.

The other infrastructure idea floated by the administration is to offer incentives to cities and states that raise their own revenue for infrastructure. But Democrats worry that such a model will pave the way for “devolution” — or eventually handing off all federal infrastructure duties to local governments.