Incoming Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer says he’s told President-elect Donald Trump that Mr. Trump’s potential price tag of $1 trillion for an infrastructure spending spree sounded good to him, depending on the specific package.
“We think it should be large. He’s mentioned a trillion dollars. I told him that sounded good to me,” Mr. Schumer said on ABC News’ “Powerhouse Politics” podcast, released this week.
“I said to do this in at least the way we wanted to do it, he’d need to alienate a good number of his right-wing Republicans,” Mr. Schumer said. “He said he realized that, and so we’ll see what happens.”
Mr. Schumer told Mr. Trump that he wouldn’t favor significant cuts to entitlement programs to pay for things.
“I told the president-elect, I’ve said it publicly over and over again: We’re not going to oppose something simply [because] it has the name Trump on it, but we will certainly not sacrifice our principles just to get something done,” he said.
Mr. Schumer also said Mr. Trump has already called him “four or five times” on different subjects and that they’ve had “cordial conversations.”
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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