These are musing that are “described by a House Democrat,” so take them with some grain of salt.

Per the Washington Post this morning:

President Trump told lawmakers Tuesday that he was abandoning a key element of his planned $1 trillion infrastructure package, complaining that certain partnerships between the private sector and federal government simply don’t work.

Trump’s comments, described by a House Democrat who met with Trump and confirmed by a White House official, reveal an infrastructure plan that appears to be up in the air as White House officials have struggled to decide how to finance many of the projects they envision to rebuild America’s roads, bridges and tunnels.

If this is true, you can chalk it up as another promise Trump has back-tracked on.

The President originally campaigned on his excellent negotiating skills paving the way for a private-public partnership to help improve the countries roads, bridges, airports, and railways. By abandoning that idea, he’s now moving toward the liberal position of simply running up more massive debt to pay for an infrastructure bill.

It’s also worth noting that this came out of another private meeting between Trump and Democrats in Congress. That’s becoming a trend. It appears he’s planning to do this despite the certain Republican opposition.

We can look at this in one positive light though. This may actually help kill what was a bad idea in the first place. There should be enough Republicans in Congress (you’d hope) who will oppose spending a trillion dollars on what amounts to another stimulus bill boondoggle. Any infrastructure will need 60 votes to pass.

The other side is that we could see a grand bargain with 15-25 Republicans joining most of the Democrats to get this through. Conservative leaders have to stand up on this. Cruz, Paul, Lee, and yes, Ben Sasse needs to do something besides virtue signal about Trump on this issue.

We’ll see where this goes. Likely nowhere good if you are a fiscal conservative.