Massachusetts

Markey: Trump's Infrastructure Plan Is ‘One Big Monetary Mirage'

In the very blue state of Massachusetts, there is great disappointment in President Donald Trump's proposed infrastructure overhaul. And Sen. Ed Markey, a member of the infrastructure committee, is leading the charge.

"There is an old saying that a vision without funding is an hallucination," Markey said.

Markey is blasting the Trump administration for proposing an infrastructure plan that the senator describes as "one big monetary mirage." He says the proposal is reversing a longstanding formula where the federal government contributes about 80 percent of the funding for critical infrastructure projects, with states and municipalities picking up about 20 percent.

"In this infrastructure scam, the president is proposing states and municipalities come up with four dollars for every one dollar of federal investment," Markey said.

Geoff Beckwith of the Massachusetts Municipal Association says cities and towns cannot begin to come up with 80 percent of the cost to fix bridges, highways, sewers and schools. And he says the $50 billion that Trump has directed for rural states creates a clear partisan divide by shifting it over "disproportionately to red states, leaving blue states like Massachusetts and industrial states behind."

Republican political analyst Gene Hartigan says the Trump administration is only trying to reform a broken system.

"One thing we cannot be doing any more spending money we don't have as a country," he said.

Chris Dempsey of Transportation for Massachusetts thinks there are other factors at play.

"Unfortunately, I think this is already posturing for the next election cycle," he said. "That's what we see. We don't see a real substantive plan."

Dempsey says Trump will get a lot of attention for promoting a $1.5 trillion investment, but Dempsey says there is no real new revenue to back up those numbers.

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