Trump's $1 trillion plan hits DC speed bumps

It was supposed to be a big, beautiful infrastructure bill. But President-elect Donald Trump’s pitch for a $1 trillion upgrade of the nation’s roads, bridges, tunnels and airports is already running into potholes as it meets reality in Washington.

The overwhelming sticking point, as always, is how to pay for it. Trump's advisers are so far floating the same kinds of financing schemes that Congress has batted around for years with little success, including proposals to lure private investors or reap a revenue windfall through an overhaul of the tax code. Key lawmakers say they’re in the dark on how Trump’s plan would work — with some conservatives simply hoping that his call for massive tax breaks will provide an economic jolt that makes the hard spending decisions easier. Democrats, meanwhile, are split on whether to cooperate with President-elect Trump on his plan. Even congressional Republicans who have long championed spending on transportation projects say they don’t yet know the details of Trump’s 10-year proposal, which the president-elect has vowed will “put millions of our people to work” while making US infrastructure “second to none.” It is unclear to infrastructure finance experts whether his plan would involve much, or even any, additional federal spending on top of the five-year, $305 billion transportation bill that Congress approved in 2015.