GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump is vowing to double the $275 billion his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, plans to spend on infrastructure.
Although Trump has long talked about the need to fix the nation’s crumbling roads and bridges, the real estate mogul has yet to lay out a specific policy proposal, including how much he would spend or how he would pay for it.
{mosads}Trump told Fox Business Network’s Stuart Varney on Tuesday that Clinton’s numbers are “a fraction of what we’re talking about” and that he would raise money for transportation projects through a fund.
“I would say at least double her numbers, and you’re really going to need more than that. We have bridges that are falling down,” Trump said. “We’ll get a fund, we’ll make a phenomenal deal with the low interest rates and rebuild our infrastructure.”
That would put Trump’s plan at over half a trillion dollars.
When pressed on who would put money into the fund, Trump said “people, investors.”
“The citizens would put money into the fund … and it will be a great investment and it’s going to put a lot of people to work.”
The money for the fund would be sold as bonds, he added.
“We’d do infrastructure bonds for the country, from the United States,” Trump said. “We have to fix our infrastructure, but we have to fix it without cost overruns to get it done properly.”
Trump has acknowledged in the past that major infrastructure investments would take taxpayer dollars.
But Trump told Varney that he is promising big tax cuts, while Clinton is backing substantial increases.
“And I’m doing the biggest tax decrease,” Tump said. “So, of all of the people running, including Republicans and Democrats, mine is the biggest.”
Washington lawmakers have struggled to come up with long-term funding solutions for the Highway Trust Fund. The pot of money supports transportation and infrastructures projects throughout the country and is financed by the federal gas tax, which hasn’t been raised in over 20 years.
Clinton has proposed a sweeping, five-year infrastructure plan that includes $250 billion for new and improved infrastructure and $25 billion on a national infrastructure bank to help bring private capital off the sidelines.
Her campaign website says the plan would be fully paid for through business tax reform but does not go into further detail.
“What I’m offering is the biggest job creation program since World War II,” Clinton told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. “We’ve got roads, bridges, tunnels, ports, airports, water systems, all failing, all being less than efficient in a time when we want to lift on the economy and take on the rest of the world.”
Although Trump’s infrastructure proposal is still light on details, one conservative group is already sounding the alarm over proposed deficit spending under either administration.
Trump recently told The New York Times that he supports borrowing and spending in order to boost economic growth, a break from traditional Republican principles.
“Republicans and Democrats must reject this notion that the federal government can continue borrowing money to spend our way to economic opportunity for all,” said Dan Holler, vice president of communications and government relations for Heritage Action.