Connecticut’s U.S. senators on Friday charged that while President Donald Trump has been making big promises about infrastructure improvements, there is little evidence of a plan emerging from the White House.
In fact, Trump’s promises to “buy American” are already falling by the wayside, with the recent revelation that the controversial Keystone pipeline will not use American steel.
“The specific promises he makes in these speeches are not true,” U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy said during a morning news conference in the state Capitol complex. “And it becomes difficult to hold him to his word when what he’s saying doesn’t turn out to be true and there’s no legislative proposals to back up these promises.”
Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday was filled with “apparently empty promises and vacuous platitudes without real specifics” according to Sen. Richard Blumenthal.
“What we are waiting to see is whether there will be specifics,” said Blumenthal, who like Murphy is a Connecticut Democrat.
Blumenthal agrees with Trump on the need for a trillion-dollar infrastructure investment.
“There is no question that this nation needs to rebuild its roads and bridges and ports and airports and, yes, its VA facilities and broadband,” Blumenthal said. “But it has to be done in the right way, through public investment, a public-private partnership that avoids giveaways and special breaks to the Wall Street investors and to the special interests that President Trump’s nominees reflect and represent in their positions and their past activities.”
Murphy said that if majority Republicans and the president want to make the Affordable Care Act better instead of repealing it, Democrats will work with them. “I have submitted to the president five executive actions that he could take today to create thousands of jobs through better enforcement of the buy-America law,” he said. “I have heard nothing back from the president on those proposals. At this point in President Trump’s administration, he has yet to submit a single legislative proposal to Congress.”