The long-promised Trump infrastructure plan may have just leaked

Donald Trump pledged a $1 trillion infrastructure plan as part of his campaign, but he failed to fulfill that promise in the first year of his presidency.

Now the Trump administration has been gearing up to introduce its infrastructure plan for real this time, pegged to the president’s first State of the Union address next week.

Now Axios reports it’s gotten a leaked copy of the expected White House infrastructure proposal. The six-page document outlines a plan to use federal grants to spur state, local, and private investment. It also appropriates a big chunk of funds to rural infrastructure projects, including transportation, broadband installation, and water and waste treatment programs.

The leaked document doesn’t detail the cost of the plan, but previous reports have suggested the administration will seek $200 billion in grants over 10 years to leverage investment from state, local, and private sources, hoping to spur about $1 trillion total in spending.

A White House spokesperson would not comment on the legitimacy of the document to Axios, saying it “[looks] forward to presenting our plan in the near future.”

Reuters reporter David Shepardson offered a little skepticism on Twitter, saying it wasn’t clear the document had been written by a government agency.

The leaked document doesn’t include any numbers — or any specifics on how to pay for any increase in government spending — but emphasizes the use of federal grants to trigger state, local, and private investment. The plan appropriates 50 percent of funds toward such grants, which will cover a broad array of projects. That includes everything from surface transport to ports to water infrastructure.

Federal grants can’t exceed more than 20 percent of the project’s total cost, according to the document, which will likely mean states and localities will probably be on the hook for much of any project’s financing. Yonah Freemark, a transportation and urbanism expert, wrote a worthwhile thread about the leaked plan on Twitter. Overall, the federal government could end up contributing even less to those projects than it does today:

The leaked plan also puts aside some funding, about 10 percent, for what it calls a “Transformative Projects Program,” which focuses on innovative or “ground-breaking” infrastructure projects that might be riskier investment for private entities, but “offer a larger reward profile.”

The proposal also calls for a significant investment in rural infrastructure. Fully 25 percent of appropriated funds will go to rural projects, including transportation, broadband and other communication projects, and water, power, and electric infrastructure.

The plan also includes tax incentives for private investors, including expanding the use of private activity bonds, and calls for the creation of a new “Public Lands Infrastructure Fund,” which would put aside money from mineral and energy extraction on federal lands and waters.

The document doesn’t mention any specific projects, and again, doesn’t have dollar amounts. There are also some notable omissions, including no mention of an increase in the gas tax to give an infusion to the struggling Highway Trust Fund, which pays for surface transportation and hasn’t increased in more than two decades.

Again, this might not be the final version of the White House’s infrastructure proposal, the details of which are expected around the State of the Union next week. Even after that, any such infrastructure plan will have to get through a spending adverse Republican Congress.

There had been some hope that Trump and the Democrats might be able to work together on infrastructure, but the left has grown skeptical about the administration’s plans. Immigration negotiations and the shutdown drama may now make bipartisan cooperation on infrastructure an even tougher sell.