Trump's Infrastructure Hoax Gives with One Hand and Takes with the Other

The words "cruel hoax" sound overly harsh, but they're not harsh enough to expose the flim-flam that is Donald Trump's phony infrastructure "plan."

You'd think that Donald Trump would be smart enough to release his infrastructure plan and the 2019 budget proposal that makes it an insane joke on different days, if only to make it slightly more likely that people who make a living analyzing these things might not notice the contemptible mendacity of the whole affair. But you'd be wrong because today he released them both.

This is at least Donald Trump's third Infrastructure Week, and it's different because he actually said something about infrastructure! And there's a plan! And it's so bad people are stopping in the streets and uttering a collective WTF?! OK, people are not stopping in the streets, but they are dodging potholes left and right.

Imagine the federal government solving the infrastructure problems by selling off federal infrastructure while offering to build or finance bloody nothing. Odd, but that's about what Trump's plan is. If you build it, we will come. Oh, and local governments, you pay for it. That will be easy now that the new tax cut law has capped state and local tax deductions on our federal taxes. It'll be so easy for states to raise taxes now!

Quick take: Trump reverses the usual "Feds pay 80% to 90%" on new infrastructure to "Feds pay 10 to 15%" and state and local governments, strapped as they are for cash, the rest! But don't worry, Trump says let the private sector take over! Soon we'll be paying road tolls just to go to Safeway.

It's bad enough that the plan calls for $200 billion in federal spending. But to make it insanely hoax-worthy, the 2019 budget Trump puts out calls for $178 billion in cuts to transportation spending.

That's not a plan, that's a practical joke.