Infrastructure money in doubt for next COVID-19 response package

Trump has been advocating since mid-April for using COVID-19 recovery money to fund infrastructure, with the potential to be “stronger than ever before.” But after being informed of McConnell’s recent comments, he seemed less forceful about that plan.

“We have to rebuild our country,” Trump said during a Tuesday press conference. “You wanted to fix a pothole in a roadway or in a highway in this country, and you didn’t do it because they didn’t have the money because so much money was spent in the Middle East. We want to do infrastructure, but a lot of the Republicans would like to keep that as a separate bill. So we’ll see how that works out.”

There have also been calls from the private sector to use the pandemic as an incentive for more long-term infrastructure funding by approving a multiyear reauthorization of the Fast Act, which is set to expire at the end of September.

The Transportation Construction Coalition, a group of 31 associations and labor unions, wrote congressional leaders in March urging them to move on a $287 billion, five-year reauthorization passed by the Republican-led Senate Environment & Public Works Committee last July.

House Democrats announced their own long-term proposal in January, a five-year, $760 billion “framework” that includes billions of dollars for green initiatives such as electric vehicles and alternative fuels.

If the effects of the pandemic are not enough to influence a long-term surface transportation reauthorization by the fall, lawmakers would likely settle for a short-term extension that would help keep the Highway Trust Fund from going bankrupt in 2022.