WASHINGTON –The White House acknowledged Wednesday the Gateway project would be good for the economy, despite President Trump’s ongoing resistance to funding the New York-New Jersey tunnel project.
The project would have “a positive impact on the economy,” one senior administration official said Wednesday in a briefing.
The official declined to say whether the proposed new tunnel under the Hudson River would be the biggest infrastructure boon nationwide, but said Gateway would be “an opportunity for economic enhancement.”
The positive comments come as Trump plans to pitch his infrastructure plan while stumping in Ohio Thursday.
His plan would free $200 billion in federal funds to spur a total of $1.5 trillion in public and private investments. There would be no special incentive for project that advocates say is vital to Trump’s home state and New Jersey, as well as Amtrak and commuter rail passengers.
Trump threatened last week to veto a massive $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill that contained $540 million to kick-start Gateway construction because “we don’t want to single out individual projects,” a second administration official said.
Trump’s chief economic adviser Kevin Hassett released a report Wednesday predicting Trump’s plan would tick up GDP growth by .1 to .2 percentage points annually and lead to the employment of 290,000 to 414,000 workers over 10 years, especially those with a high school education or less.
New York and New Jersey officials had hoped Trump would honor an Obama-era agreement that called for the federal government to cover half of the costs of the tunnel project, estimated at $30 billion. The Trump Administration declined, forcing Gateway backers in Congress to use creative methods to carve out funding in existing federal programs.
“The president’s position on Gateway has been relatively clear, which is we don’t want to single out individual projects and have earmarks for those projects,” the second official said. “We want to be able to look across the country at projects as a whole in terms of where is the most efficacious place for us to invest (with) relatively scarce federal dollars.”
