WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio has asked former President Donald Trump to support the infrastructure deal he’s been negotiating for weeks with the Biden administration and a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators.
Portman said he told Trump the package was consistent with what he tried to achieve as President and that Trump should take some credit for initiating the discussion among Republicans by proposing a $1.5 trillion infrastructure package during his campaign.
Trump posted a message on his official website on Monday to attack the pending deal. It said: “Who are these RINO Republicans that are so dedicated to giving the Radical Left Democrats a big and beautiful win on Infrastructure? Republican voters will never forget their name, nor will the people of our Country!”
Portman said the deal he’s negotiating would comply with Trump’s wishes by not affecting tax cuts enacted in 2017 during Trump’s tenure, “despite what Democrats wanted to do and what the Biden administration had proposed.” Portman said the pending deal pulled core infrastructure out of the $2.65 trillion package that Biden initially proposed and moved forward with it on a bipartisan basis without raising taxes, which he said would hurt the economy.
“I would hope that the President (Trump) at the end will be supportive,” Portman told reporters on Tuesday. “I’m going to try to keep him informed of what we’re doing, because I think it’s important that we continue to have this be bipartisan. It’s not a victory for one party or the other, in my view, it’s a victory for the American people.”
Portman did not say when he talked to Trump or how Trump responded to Portman’s request. Portman’s press office did not immediately respond to a request for that information.
Portman said he hasn’t heard any Congress members discussing Trump’s statement on the infrastructure package, and said he’s confident that, given the support for infrastructure improvements in Congress and around the country, negotiators will be able to wrap up remaining issues in the next few days.
“It’s always tough at the end to resolve those final issues because they tend to be the toughest ones,” said Portman.
He said one issue that’s still outstanding is how much money to provide for mass transit such as buses and commuter rail. Even though his group has offered “unprecedented investment in transit,” Portman said some Democrats oppose their suggestions “so we are trying to get to ‘yes’ on that.”
Other unresolved issues include funding for water infrastructure, broadband, and the infrastructure bank, said Portman.
“I think we have solutions and I hope within the next couple of days, we’ll be able to bring it all together,” Portman said.
He said the package will include “an unprecedented amount of money for major bridges that are structurally deficient,” such as the Brent Spence Bridge over the Ohio River, which connects Cincinnati with neighboring areas in Kentucky.
“It would be, I would think, at the top of any list, in terms of being able to compete for and receive federal funding,” Portman said.
Portman said the bill would deliver a one-time supplemental appropriation of $579 billion “as a shot in the arm to our nation’s infrastructure, to get it up to speed.” He said White House claims that the bill would spend $1.2 trillion include money that would have been spent on infrastructure anyway, even without its passage. He said the money could be used to fund major highway projects in the Cleveland area or at the Port of Cleveland that could take as long as 20 years to complete.
“That funding will go out over time, which is one reason this doesn’t have any impact on inflation because there will be hardly any money spent this year or next year,” said Portman. “This is not about shovel ready projects. This is about long term investments in hard assets, major infrastructure projects.”
Portman also told reporters he was concerned that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to reject two Republicans - Indiana’s Jim Banks and Ohio’s Jim Jordan - that House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy wanted to appoint to a bipartisan House of Representatives select committee to investigate the June 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol is “not the way to have a bipartisan effort that is viewed as legitimate by both sides.” He called her actions “unprecedented.”
“Right now, our country is way too divided already and that just makes it worse,” said Portman. “I do believe that January 6 needs to be looked into and looked into in a way that is serious, nonpartisan, not just bipartisan, nonpartisan. We need the facts out there.”
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