WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump disparaged his predecessor’s economic stimulus spending Tuesday as a windfall for social programs and said he’s unaware of anything built from the money steered to infrastructure.
That’s a mischaracterization of former President Barack Obama’s 2009 stimulus package, which had tax cuts as its largest component and plowed more than $100 billion into highway, transit and other “shovel-ready” infrastructure projects, to use the buzz phrase of that time.
Trump needn’t have ventured far from Trump Tower to see stimulus money at work. The Brooklyn Bridge and a new landmark Manhattan train station were among New York City’s recipients of millions of stimulus dollars for construction and repairs. And Trump liked the package at the time. When it passed in the depths of the severe recession, he praised Obama as a “strong guy” who did a “terrific job,” adding, “this is what we need.”
That appraisal has changed as Trump prepares to pitch Congress on his own infrastructure initiative.
TRUMP, in remarks to CEOs Tuesday: “There was a very large infrastructure bill that was approved during the Obama administration, a trillion dollars. Nobody ever saw anything being built. I mean, to this day, I haven’t heard of anything that’s been built. They used most of that money – it went and they used it on social programs and we want this to be on infrastructure.”