White House officials predicted Monday that their forthcoming infrastructure legislation could pass the House and Senate this year, despite a growing consensus that lawmakers won’t get to the bill before 2018.
“The exact timing will be dependent upon conversations with congressional leadership, but we absolutely feel that the infrastructure package can be accomplished this year,” Reed Cordish, assistant to the president for intragovernmental and technology initiatives, told reporters at the White House.
Cordish said the infrastructure package, which administration officials plan to roll out during a series of events this week, would be “separate from the normal infrastructure spending” contained in whatever spending bill Congress passes later this year.
President Trump was slated to announce an overhaul of the Air Traffic Control system later Monday in the first of four infrastructure-focused events scheduled this week, which officials have dubbed “Infrastructure Week.”
“It is just a precursor for the larger overall infrastructure [package] which will follow it,” Cordish said of the aviation reforms.
DJ Gribbin, special assistant to the president for infrastructure, said the other events this week will include Trump’s trip Wednesday to Ohio to discuss moving freight through inland waterways, a listening session with governors and mayors in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, and remarks at the Department of Transportation headquarters on Friday, where the president will unveil a plan to reform the infrastructure permitting process.
The air traffic reforms, Gribbin said, will involve splitting the Air Traffic Control system from the Federal Aviation Administration. The move would enhance safety and national security, Gribbin added, and would increase accountability by changing the system’s oversight structure.
Critics have characterized the aviation reforms as privatization of a crucial function of the FAA.
Trump has previously proposed an infrastructure package that could cost as much as $1 trillion, most of which would be funded through the private sector.
