White House Pushing 'Infrastructure Week': Here's What To Expect

On Monday, President Donald Trump kicked off his effort to reform the Federal Aviation Administration.

The initiative is expected to mirror a plan by House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster, which died after committee last year.

Privatizing Air-Traffic Control

The idea — which has existed in some form since the Clinton administration — would be to privatize air-traffic control nationwide under a non-profit corporation. It would also repeal most aviation taxes and create a new user fee-funded structure.

"We think it would add a lot of improvement,” United Continental Holdings Inc UAL CEO Oscar Munoz told USA Today.

Most of the other major airlines also support privatizing air-traffic control, which would speed up the industry’s modernization and save billions of dollars a year.

Despite this support, Height Securities still says it is “unlikely that the proposal will be ready for prime time this year, particularly given the looming September 30 deadline for reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration.”

The move toward privatization would likely disrupt the current “NextGen” program to modernize air-traffic control, which has been the work several of contractors including Harris Corporation HRS, Raytheon Company RTN and Lockheed Martin Corporation LMT.

The Week Ahead

Trump will be holding a series of events over the course of the next few days as part of what is being called “Infrastructure Week.”

On Wednesday, he will speak at the Ohio–Kentucky border to discuss infrastructure investments regarding waterways.

Later in the week, the president will host mayors and governors at the White House to discuss highway and rail improvements.

The week's events are part of a push for Trump’s campaign pledge to spend $1 trillion dollars of infrastructure over 10 years, one of his few proposals Democrats will be eager to help with. The full plan is expected in late 2017, to be voted on in 2018.

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