Greater reliance on user fees, federal loans rather than grants, and corporatization are three keys to the Trump administration’s infrastructure initiative released as a part of its 2018 budget.

President Trump issued his first federal budget Tuesday, and critics have been quick to call the proposals cruel and heartless.

Conservative and libertarian fears about Donald Trump’s infrastructure rhetoric will be somewhat allayed by today’s budget.

The Trump administration’s 2018 budget to be released tomorrow will include a range of proposed spending cuts.

The Washington Post notes the following quote from Rep. Paul Ryan in his CPAC speech:

The Republican Study Committee released its fiscal 2013 budget proposal this week and it’s not horrible. That’s probably a compliment given that the bar is so low on Capitol Hill that one would trip on it. According to the RSC’s numbers, federal spending as a percentage of GDP would recede to a bit over 18 percent in 2022. That’s a level of spending that hasn’t been achieved since George Bush and his fellow Republicans in Congress initiated the federal spending spree of the past ten years.

Chris Edwards provided an ample overview of Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget proposal, so I won’t rehash the numbers. Instead, I’ll just add a few comments.

President Obama is releasing his FY2013 budget today, and it’s more of the same—trillion-dollar deficits, huge spending, and tax hikes on high-earners. The president wants to raise taxes substantially on households earning more than $250,000. It’s all about fairness he claims, even though effective tax rates on high-earners are already double the rates on middle-earners.