A former top figure in the Obama administration is warning Democrats not to back President-elect Donald Trump’s infrastructure plan, calling it a “trap” that “they will regret.”
{mosads}“Backing Trump’s plan is a mistake in policy and political judgment they will regret, as did their Democratic predecessors who voted for Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts in 1981 and George W. Bush’s cuts in 2001,” Ronald Klain wrote in a Washington Post op-ed Friday.
Klain, who advised Hillary Clinton’s recent campaign, said Trump’s proposal is neither a jobs nor infrastructure plan.
“Instead, Trump’s plan provides tax breaks to private-sector investors who back profitable construction projects,” he said.
Klain emphasized that the Trump plan will “undermine core Democratic principles” and that Democrat votes for it “will not wear well in the future.” He argued that the plan does not directly fund infrastructure projects like new roads or airports.
“Because the plan subsidizes investors, not projects; because it funds tax breaks, not bridges; because there’s no requirement that the projects be otherwise unfunded, there is simply no guarantee that the plan will produce any net new hiring,” he added.
The former Obama official noted that Democrats are both looking for ways to work with the President-elect and to appeal to white working class voters who helped flip the election for Trump. But Klain maintained that the infrastructure plan would add to the deficit, while helping investors and not workers.
“But when the plan is passed and those voters see that it fattens investors’ and contractors’ pockets (but not workers’), creates few jobs, depresses wages and damages our environment, they will sour on it and turn against its backers,” he wrote.
Klain was the Obama administration’s Ebola response coordinator and served as Vice President Joe Biden’s chief of staff.