WASHINGTON: US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that she thought an infrastructure bill was “within range”.
“I’m optimistic because we must do it,” Xinhua news agency quoted the Democratic leader as saying at a National Governors Association event on Sunday.
“I think there’s a real chance, the President wants it,” she said.
Several senior US lawmakers have called for an immediate action to upgrade the country’s crumbling infrastructure, but talks between the administration and Democratic leaders over a $2-trillion-plan fell apart in May 2019.
At Sunday’s event moderated by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, Pelosi said that Richard Neal, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, will meet Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Tuesday when they may resume talks on an infrastructure bill.
Pelosi noted that the key issue was how to pay for it.
“Infrastructure, it’s all about money,” she said. “The national debt is growing at such a rate that we’d have to pay as you go.”
The California Democrat again criticized President Donald Trump administration’s tax cuts rolled out in late 2017, calling them a “tax scam” that added $2 trillion to the national debt.
“This is unsustainable,” she said.
When asked by Maryland Governor Larry Hogan whether it was possible to get something done on infrastructure in this election year, Pelosi said she thinks it is “really honestly within range”.
“There’s never going to be enough appropriate funds ever to meet the needs that we have, we have to be more entrepreneurial and creative in how we come up with it,” said Pelosi. IANS
