When governors convened in Washington this weekend, Republicans and Democrats seemed to agree with President Donald Trump on one thing.
"Everyone likes them a little infrastructure," Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin told Newsmax while attending the winter meeting of the National Governors Association.
Bevin, a Republican, noted the new Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, a Kentuckian, will be leading the charge. He also pointed out that four interstate highways intersect in Louisville.
"We have a somewhat ailing infrastructure. The time has come for us to address this,"Bevin said. "We have spent an inordinate amount of money globally building infrastructure and rebuilding infrastructure in places where frankly we’re not exactly welcomed or appreciated. So I think there are a lot of folks that say, why don’t we think about deploying some of those same types of dollars back into our own nation in our own infrastructure.”
The governors will meet with Trump on Sunday night and Monday morning and have reportedly provided the administration with a list of 428 proposed projects, but haven’t publicly released it. California Gov. Jerry Brown has already announced he is asking for $100 billion in federal money. Other states are seeking significantly less.
During the 2016 campaign, Trump talked about a $1 trillion plan to rebuild the country. Since taking office, he issued an executive order to expedite environmental reviews for high priority projects, and will likely address infrastructure in his speech to a joint session of Congress Tuesday.
"We’re looking at how do we accelerate the permitting process, which the president has given us a commitment to help facilitate,"Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, told Newsmax. "…We’re estimating we could spend about $900 million a year for the next 10 years and just get caught up."
Gov. Terry McAuliffe, the NGA chairman, said Virginia leads the way on public private partnerships, noting other billion-dollar projects already happening.
"If the federal government will put up money, I can bring in private sector and state money, and we can turbo charge federal investments,"McAuliffe, a Democrat, told Newsmax. "I’ll take every penny they can give me. They put money in, I’ll go out and raise money.”
Vermont’s Republican Gov. Phil Scott said his state has a long list of projects, but cautioned against similar mistakes of President Barack Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, a $787 billion package sold as an infrastructure bill, but only 6 percent was devoted to transportation.
"The problem with ARRA was much of it was not an investment in capital needs. In some cases it was in operating costs and so forth,"Scott told Newsmax. "I don’t think you can borrow money and bond for operating costs. I think it has to go into infrastructure, real infrastructure. So, I’m hopeful that we can move forward on that in the future, that we have a good plan to invest in capital projects.”