Is 'big and bold' doomed to sputter and croak?

摘要

When the Democratic leaders of Capitol Hill emerged from a heavily hyped April 30 White House "goodwill" meeting with President Donald Trump, they appeared ebullient and with no hesitation, reported to waiting journalists that a bipartisan agreement had been reached to introduce to Congress a $2 trillion plan to modernize the nations, highways, bridges, railroads, power grid, and other key elements of infrastructure. Speaking first to the media scrum on the White House drive was Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). "We just had a very productive meeting with the president of the United States," she stated. "We came to this meeting with the recognition that we stand at a pivotal place in terms of building infrastructure for the future." Pelosi then said that funding infrastructure is "about jobs, jobs, jobs. It's about commerce and clean air and clean water, and it's a public health issue, a quality of life issue, and in every way, a safety issue. "We are very excited about the conversation we had with the president to advance an agenda [for infrastructure funding]," she continued. "It remains to be seen how it would be paid for, [but] infrastructure in America has never been a partisan issue and we have to move forward in a very nonpartisan way for the future."