Tomorrow, President Trump will give his State of the Union speech and the stakes couldn’t be higher. The Economic momentum from unlocking that can-do spirit of America could stand a second boost of legislation that would include infrastructure investments and banking reform. 

The latter isn’t on the table, but the White House has hinted at a $1.0 trillion infrastructure plan that could balloon to $1.7 trillion leveraged by the private sector.

Meanwhile, some forces, including the Chamber of Commerce, are pushing hard for a gasoline tax to fund infrastructure. The Chamber gets the biggest tax cut in corporate America’s history and now wants low-income workers and middle-class families to pay more taxes. 

Just as crude oil is moving to multi-year highs, these guys think it’s smart to raise a tax that inordinately impacts the working poor.

In December, taxes were 18% for a gallon of gas; more recently, it’s 18.7% while crude has erupted to 57.0%. There are some smart folks working with the White House to come up with creative ways to fix our bridges and tunnels that won’t drop a ton of bricks on Main Street. There’s also a discussion about the Wall that could fetch $25.0 billion in financing. 

Today, we got the latest on personal income and outlays. I was watching for a spike in income and perhaps a rebound in savings. 

Today’s Session

Personal income and outlays results are reiterating the trends that have been in place for most of 2017.  Income climbed 0.4% against an estimate of 0.3%, while spending of 0.4% was below the 0.5% anticipated.  There was also a big revision to November spending to +0.8% from +0.6%.

Much is being made of the 2.4% saving rate, but I’ll take a deeper dive to underscore the pros and cons including the de facto official consumer confidence poll = Americans spending money.

Outlays of $54.2 Billion:

• Goods +4.0 billion
• Services +50.2 billion

There is a fair amount of angst this morning.