GOP Offer on Infrastructure Is Smaller Than It Looks

Catherine Rampell: “See, the White House proposal had been framed as new infrastructure money, on top of whatever the government was already expected to spend on roads, bridges, airports, broadband, etc., if existing laws and programs continue without changes.”

“The Republican plan, by contrast, takes credit for all this already scheduled spending when calculating its total.”

“That’s significant because the ‘baseline’ spending (roughly $379 billion over the next five years) represents almost all of what Republicans have offered up. Once you strip out this already expected spending, the entire GOP plan is a mere $189 billion of new money.”