Trump's giant $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan looks dead on arrival

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President Donald Trump

• President Donald Trump used the State of the Union to try to sell a new $1.5 trillion infrastructure package.
• The speech was light on details, and many lawmakers expressed skepticism about the proposal.
• Policy analysts were bearish on a large infrastructure package's chances following the speech.

President Donald Trump was widely expected to use Tuesday's State of the Union speech to offer details about his significant proposed infrastructure investment.

But after the speech, many policy analysts came away disappointed at the lack of detail and skeptical about the chances of a large-scale investment in America's roads and bridges.

"It was all adjectives and no math," Chris Kreuger, a a political strategist at Cowen Washington Research Group, told Business Insider.

The speech did clear up one question: the exact headline target for the project. Trump promised to invest $1.5 trillion on the nation's roads and bridges, but offered few other specifics.

"I am asking both parties to come together to give us safe, fast, reliable, and modern infrastructure that our economy needs and our people deserve," Trump said.

But little is known about the plan outside of a leaked memo that outlined where some of the funding would go and said it would include $200 billion in federal spending with the other $1.3 trillion coming from state, local, and private investment.

Not looking likely

Many analysts already believe the plan has little hope of coming to fruition.

"On infrastructure, the president's message was aspirational, but I am bearish given funding concerns and political headwinds," Isaac Boltansky, a policy analyst at research firm Compass Point, told Business Insider on Wednesday.

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle also have concerns about the plan.

Many Republican lawmakers are wary of taking on any debt to pass such a bill and funding sources will be key.

"You tell me how we pay for it and I'll tell you what we can do," Sen. John Cornyn, the second-highest ranking GOP senator, told reporters after Trump's speech. "Leveraging private dollars is a good start but we got a lot of work to do."

Democrats, meanwhile, laid out concerns with a slew of the plan's approaches. Trump called for a "streamlining" of the permit-approval process for infrastructure projects, which Democrats say could be a way to bypass rules to protect the environment.

"The changes to regulatory reviews are likely to be a poison pill for many Congressional Democrats if it weakens environmental protections," Ed Mills, a policy analyst at Raymond James, wrote in a note to clients on Wednesday.

Many Democrats also worried that the proposed private-public partnerships could be abused and result in projects that are not as beneficial to communities.

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin said that the lack of detail shows the Trump administration does not have a serious plan to secure the funding, telling The Washington Post the mention of infrastructure in the State of the Union was "a throwaway line, it avoids coming up with serious funding."

Since any infrastructure bill would need at least nine Democratic votes in the Senate to clear procedural hurdles, the likelihood of a package passing in 2018 are slim, most analysts agreed. Krueger said only one unfortunate avenue could prompt a plan like Trump's to move through the legislature.

"Not to be morbid, but an infrastructure catastrophe could move the needle (bridge collapse or something) and spur Congressional action, " Krueger told Business Insider. "Barring some kind of morbid catalyst, seems extremely unlikely."