President Trump, New York Governor Cuomo Meet on Infrastructure To ‘Supercharge’ the Economy

May 27, 2020 (EIRNS)—Today at the White House, President Donald Trump hosted New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for talks that included infrastructure building. Trump then departed for the Florida space center, and Cuomo gave a press conference. Cuomo said, “It was a good discussion, he understood what we were talking about, understood what we need, and he’s going to be thinking about it, talk to his team, and he said we’ll talk next week.”

The projects Cuomo mentioned are the Gateway Program for a tunnel between New Jersey and Manhattan, a $30 billion project; building an “air train” to LaGuardia Airport; and completing the Second Avenue Subway project in Manhattan. He spoke to the President about putting investment on the fast track for these.

Cuomo raised specifics, for example, about how to expedite the LaGuardia project, because enough environmental impact study has already been done. No more is needed. Cuomo also stressed that his talk with Trump was nonpartisan.

Cuomo told reporters,

“It was not about politics. It was about, how do we supercharge the reopening, especially in New York, which has been hardest hit [by coronavirus]; how do we take some of these big infrastructure projects that have been sitting around for a long time, which, if we were all smarter and better, we would have done them 30 years ago, and actually get them up and running, because we have to do this work anyway and because we need the jobs now more than ever.

“If he gives us the green light, this is not going to be years of discussion. I have a shovel in the trunk of my car. We’ll start this afternoon, right?”

he said.