Rep. Dan Kildee of Michigan said Monday that President Trump’s infrastructure plan would need to be big enough to make a difference in order to get support from Democrats like him.
“It would have to be big enough to be transformative. Secondly, this is a little wonky, we’d have to make sure that those 40 or 50 really distressed, older, industrial cities had some additional support, essentially a Marshall Plan for those places, because a big infusion of capital moving into infrastructure, could inadvertently have the effect of more efficiently emptying out these older cities by creating magnets of development,” Mr. Kildee said on MSNBC.
The Michigan Democrat, who represents the area near Flint, said there were two reasons Mr. Trump’s job and infrastructure message took in his home state: “One is that he had the frustrated voter, who felt we’d all abandoned him, go with him. The other is sort of the middle, the base that we depend upon, was unmotivated.”
Mr. Kildee also said Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s issue wasn’t about time spent in his state, it was about her message.
“I don’t think it was about time. I think it was sort of about the focus of the message. It needed to be about the jobs and the economy and nothing else,” he said. “If we’re not talking about jobs, if we’re not talking about how to grow the economy, it does not matter what else we are talking about in Michigan.”
• Sally Persons can be reached at spersons@washingtontimes.com.
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