Politics

Trump calls for $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill during State of the Union speech

Key Points
  • President Donald Trump spoke about his administration's infrastructure plan in his first State of the Union address on Tuesday.
  • Details about the plan have been leaked in recent weeks, but the speech marks the clearest picture yet from Trump himself on his vision for infrastructure.
Trump: It is also time to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure
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Trump: It is also time to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure

President Donald Trump called on Congress Tuesday to advance a $1.5 trillion plan to "rebuild our crumbling infrastructure" in his first official State of the Union address.

Trump's remarks, while still a ways off from the level of detail to be expected from a formal written proposal, offered the clearest picture yet from the president himself on his vision for an American infrastructure revamp.

To fund the plan, Trump said all federal appropriations should be "leveraged by partnering with state and local governments and, where appropriate, tapping into private sector investment."

He also called for the legislation to reduce the time required to approve building permits to as little as one to two years.

The official text of the plan itself, CNBC reported Tuesday, will be specific enough to circumvent the criticism initially heaped on the scant first version of the administration's tax plan, while remaining broad enough to avoid its chances of passage being bogged down by minutiae.

Officials told CNBC at the end of 2017 that the push for infrastructure would likely begin in January, making it the next big issue for the administration to conquer after the passage of tax reform legislation in December.

Last week, Axios published a reported leak of the administration's infrastructure plan. The document, while containing no specific dollar figures, showed 50 percent of the funds going toward an "infrastructure incentives" grant program providing federal funds to state, local or private entities.