By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Top Democrats in Congress told U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday that the United States has “massive” infrastructure needs which must be met with “substantial, new and real revenue.”
In a letter ahead of a White House meeting with Trump on Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer said the deal must be “comprehensive and include clean energy and resiliency priorities.”
Any deal must “go beyond transportation and into broadband, water, energy, schools, housing and other initiatives. We must also invest in resiliency and risk mitigation of our current infrastructure to deal with climate change,” the Democrats added.
The White House did not immediately comment, but Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow told reporters Monday that the president has not made up his mind on whether to support raising a federal tax on gasoline as part of an infrastructure package.
Both sides are keeping expectations low for the meeting and no formal proposals are expected to be exchanged. “We want to hear what they have to say about it, and we’ll react to that. But no, we’re not … coming into it with a blueprint,” Kudlow said.
In a February 2018 meeting with lawmakers, Trump had endorsed hiking the federal gasoline tax by 25 cents per gallon to fund infrastructure improvements, Democratic Senator Tom Carper said.
The current tax of 18.4 cents a gallon on gasoline has been in place since 1993. The federal diesel tax is 24.4 cents a gallon.
Schumer will not consider a proposal to raise the gas tax unless “Trump considers undoing some of the 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy,” a source close to Schumer said Monday.
Other key Democrats attending Tuesday’s Trump meeting include Representatives Peter DeFazio, who chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and Richard Neal, who chairs the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.
Senators Dick Durbin, Patty Murray, Debbie Stabenow, Ron Wyden and Carper will also attend, along with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, No. 3 House Democrat James Clyburn and Representative Ben Ray Lujan.
Trump, who vowed in 2016 as a presidential candidate to back $1 trillion of infrastructure spending over 10 years, has been vague about his plans in recent months.
In February last year, Trump asked Congress to authorize $200 billion in federal money over 10 years to spur road, bridge and other projects mostly funded by states, cities and the private sector. That plan was roundly criticized and never voted on in Congress, which was then controlled by Republicans.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters on April 11 that a big infrastructure boost is popular but “nobody on either side has stepped up with a credible proposal to pay for it.
“I’m all for taking it up once the president and Democrats, everybody says OK, here’s how we’re going to pay for it. As soon as that magically appears I think we have a way forward,” he said.
(Reporting by David Shepardson, Richard Cowan and Jeff Mason in Washington; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, G Crosse and Richard Chang)