Trump Could Start His Infrastructure Push At Energy Department

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Publish Date:
July 11, 2017
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Source:
The Washington Post
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Summary

President Trump has said that he wants to spend $1 trillion on rebuilding U.S. infrastructure, an investment in the nation’s public structures the size of which has not been seen since the construction of the interstate highway system.

Trump may be hard-pressed to get that tall sum from his fellow, penny-pinching Republicans in Congress. But he already has a pot of money sitting at the Energy Department that, some argue, can be used to finance energy infrastructure projects today without any additional congressional approval.

“There’s been a lot of talk about $1 trillion. There’s a really huge open question about where it’s going to come from,” said Dan Reicher, executive director of the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford and former head of the DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) under President Clinton. He testified on the loan program to the House Science Committee in February.

“I can point to close to 5 percent that’s already there on the books for energy infrastructure,” Reicher said.

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