President Donald Trump said Thursday that his $200 billion infrastructure program would "transform our roads and bridges from a course of endless frustration into a source of absolutely incredible pride" — though he acknowledged that it will "probably" be delayed until after the November midterm elections.
"You'll probably have to wait until after the election, which isn't so long down the road," Trump told members of Local 18 of the Ohio Operating Engineers Union at their Apprenticeship and Training Center in Richland, near Cleveland.
The president's concession was a recognition of the political realities in Washington, as Congress is increasingly focused on their re-elections this fall in what is expected to be a difficult campaign cycle for Republicans.
He slammed Democrats for not wanting to work with him on infrastructure because they don't want to give him any additional "wins" after his tax bill passed in December.
"Congress now has the opportunity to build on this momentum and to act on a common-sense plan that will make our economy stronger, our roads faster and our families safer," Trump said.
"We want a safe country. We want safety."
The president predicted that the plan would unleash $1.5 trillion in infrastructure investment by state and local governments.
"We will breathe new life into our very run-down highways, rail ways," he said. "We're going to do it all under budget and ahead of schedule."
Trump said that 40 percent of the nation's bridges were built before the first moon landing — Apollo 11, carrying Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, on July 20, 1969.
"You go to some countries, they're building bridges all over the place," Trump said. "We don't build bridges much.
"But our roads are clogged," the president continued. "We have average drivers spending 42 hours every year stuck in traffic, costing us at least $160 billion annually.
"Our mass-transit systems are a mess. They're dilapidated and decayed.
"We average 300 power outages per year compared to just five per year in the 1980s," Trump said. "Total mess.
"In recent years," he later added, "Americans have watched as Washington spent trillions and trillions of dollars building up foreign countries while allowing our own country's infrastructure to fall into a state of total disrepair."
President Trump cited the DMZ that separates North and South Korea, which was created in the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War.
The DMZ consists of "concertina wire, high fences, flood lights, cameras, 2 million land mines and several hundred thousand soldiers on each side of the line," according to news reports.
The United States has 28,000 American troops stationed on or near the zone.
"We have a border in Korea," Trump told the crowd. "We have a wall of soldiers.
"Nobody comes through.
"But our own border, we don't take care of it.
"Think of it: We spend billions of dollars in other countries maintaining their borders — and we can't maintain our borders in our own country.
"Is there something a little bit wrong with that?"
Trump later tweeted about his infrastructure plan:
Newsmax wires contributed to this report.
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