President Trump will be visiting Richfield, Ohio on Thursday, March 29, 2018, to discuss a new study backing an aggressive increase in spending in his infrastructure plan.
Washington ( The Pavlovic Today) — In Ohio, President Trump is expected to discuss a new report by the CEA analyzing the effects of a 1.5 trillion dollar increase in infrastructure spending.
Two Senior Administration Officials began the Wednesday conference call by discussing the “radically wrong direction” American infrastructure is headed to. They focused on the fact that average wait times on infrastructure permits have moved from 4.7 years to 5 years, which juxtaposes the rapid progress on technology that should, in theory, be speeding up permit approval processes.
They stated that the Obama administration’s efforts to further infrastructure’s speed and efficacy wasn’t efficient, and the previous funds that were going towards “clunkers that didn’t improve the economy” would be resolved in President Trump’s proposal.
The infrastructure spending plan is said to contribute up to .1 to .2 percentage points of real GDP growth every year for the next 10 years and cut wait times for permit approval in infrastructure.
Aggressive infrastructure spending increase is not new and is in line with President Trump’s agenda in returning jobs to blue-collar workers and rebuilding roads and bridges.
A Senior Administration Official highlighted the report’s prediction that such an increase in infrastructure spending will lead to between 290,000 and 414,000 new infrastructure jobs. These new jobs will particularly benefit workers without college educations, as the rate of infrastructure workers without a college education is at 63% compared to the non-infrastructure workforce at about half of that percentage.
Trump will speak in a training site for local infrastructure workers in Richfield, Ohio, and deliver his remarks to an audience of mostly blue-collar workers.
Senior Administration officials underscored the importance of returning power to state and local administrations with regards to infrastructure, emphasizing a 2015 Ohio policy with the Federal Highway Administration that allowed local wait times for infrastructure permit approval to be cut from 64 months to 27 months, on average. President Trump’s message, along with addressing the infrastructure plan, will discuss increasing commerce jobs and wages for workers everywhere.
Senior Administration Officials explained that the infrastructure plan will likely be implemented with multiple pieces of legislation, as suggested by Congress and Speaker Ryan, and they are not yet sure about the timeline of such legislation.