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|  It’s finally infrastructure week at the White House. The administration plans to release its legislative proposal on infrastructure Monday morning, including $200 billion in federal spending over the next 10 years. The White House is actually promising its plan will generate around $1.5 trillion in spending over 10 years, with a fraction coming in new federal outlays. Half of the $200 billion will go to an “incentives program,” which would supplement projects funded at the state or local levels. The feds will be looking for “dedicated revenue streams” from states, counties, cities, and private enterprises to match federal funds. So where would this non-federal money come from—tax increases, surplus spending, tolls or levies? “It could be anything,” said one administration official. “What we’re saying to states is, we would like you to increase your investment in infrastructure.” On top of that $100 billion in matching funds, the Trump proposal will allocate $50 billion for block grants to governors for rural projects; $20 billion to expand existing federal infrastructure loan programs; $20 billion for “transformative projects” (that is, new technology); and $10 billion to start a new “Federal Capital Revolving Fund.” This additional spending would be added on top of existing federal infrastructure programs, which the White House is quick to point remains a relatively small proportion of total infrastructure spending, which is mostly funded by states and local governments. But where will the $200 billion come from? The White House hasn’t been too forthcoming with details about what existing appropriations may be cut to pay for it—or if the the spending is entirely new. The answer to that will help determine whether the proposal can get enough votes from congressional Republicans, who are wary of increasing spending on infrastructure. |
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| | The second piece of the infrastructure proposal is streamlining what the White House calls a “broken permit process”—a byzantine system of duplicative and lengthy studies that seemed designed to impede, rather than approve, federally-funded infrastructure projects. The administrations calls the concept “one agency, one decision” and proposes a single timeline for all relevant federal permitting agencies directed by a lead agency. “For every decision that needs to be made, find the agency that has the best expertise in terms of making that decision, give them the authority to make that decision, and then have other agencies partner with them and execute on that decision that's been made,” as a senior White House official put it. | |
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| | Who’s Important?—Among the lead voices within the administration have been Gary Cohn, the chairman of the National Economic Council, and D.J. Gribbin, an industry veteran with stints at Koch Industries and the Transportation Department. | |
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| | Useful Idiot Watch—My colleague Ethan Epstein has been watching the media coverage of the North Korean delegation to the PyeongChang Olympics, particularly the most egregious examples of fawning attention to Kim Jong-un’s sister, who is attending the games. | |
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Photo of the Day From the Washington Post’s Josh Rogin: 
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| | The White House struggled over the weekend to contain the damage from its scandal involving one of the West Wing’s most powerful aides. Reports emerged last week that former staff secretary Rob Porter had physically abused his two former wives, and the administration had retained him despite knowing of the allegations for a year. White House officials admitted they had fumbled the situation while insisting their mistake was merely in misjudging the character of a man they thought they knew. “The president had someone working for him who came to him and said, ‘Look, I’ve been accused of this. I’ve been falsely accused of this. Please don’t believe it; it’s not true,’” Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told CBS’s Major Garrett Sunday. “You don’t want to throw people out on the street based just upon the allegation. But as soon as it became apparent to us that the allegations were true, Rob Porter had to go.” Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, White House legislative director Marc Short said there were “things we could have done better to prevent” the debacle. But he also insisted the White House was just one of many organizations—including NBC—to have botched their internal handling of a sexual misconduct charge in recent months. Read more... | |
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| | Mark It Down— “I spoke to the president last night. I told him I would be with you today. And he said, ‘please tell Jake that I have full faith in Chief of Staff John Kelly and that I'm not actively searching for replacements.’ He said, ‘I saw that all over the news today. I have faith in him.’” —Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, February 11, 2018 | |
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| | Rest In Peace—Jeff Bell was the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in New Jersey twice, in 1978 and in 2014. He lost both races, which would tell you nothing about his outsized impact on conservative and Republican politics, nor about his graciousness and intellect as an activist for conservative causes. Jeff died on Saturday, at the age of 74. Read more about his ideas-focused campaign for Senate in 2014, and about the man himself, from my colleague Andrew Ferguson. | |
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