If you live in rural America, the White House infrastructure proposal released this week might be nice to you. It allocates $50 billion in no-strings-attached spending for communities smaller than 50,000, distributed by their state governments for whatever stuff they need most: better bridges, roads, transit systems, broadband.

If you live in a really big city, it might be OK, too. President Trump’s proposed funding plan flips the status quo to make local governments pay for the majority of infrastructure projects, with the feds kicking in 20 percent instead of its standard 80 (for road projects) or 50 (for mass transit). Still, places with large, rich tax bases—New York, LA, Chicago—could, perhaps, raise the funds necessary to keep the concrete flowing. (A White House official reportedly complimented the liberal den of Los Angeles for funding infrastructure the right way, by recently voting to tax itself to raise transit funds. That’s the kind of strategy this proposal supports.)

If you’re in the middle, though, in a town or a smaller city that hasn’t tapped into post-recession growth, critics say the "Legislative Outline for Rebuilding Infrastructure in America" won’t help you much. It’s long on reform, the sort of streamlining that city officials say is needed to cut down the expensive and aggravating gaps between proposal, design, and construction. But it’s short on actual money, allocating just $100 billion in matching funds over 10 years for infrastructure projects for the whole country.

To allocate those $100 billion dollars, the White House proposes a competitive grant process that would favor applicants that can “secure and commit” continuing funds for their project, including future money for operation, maintenance, and rehab. The ventures, in other words, that can pick up most of the tab.

That’s a problem for cities that don’t have steady funding streams, or that find themselves in any of the 42 states that restrict locales’ rights to tax their citizens.

So if your cash-poor, midsize municipality has potholes, a lacking bus system, and leaky aqueducts, but doesn’t necessarily need a new highway, a brand new streetcar track, or new pipe system, the scheme might not be for you.

Now, this is just a proposal. The plan proposes to use a total of $200 billion in federal funds, offset through unspecified cuts elsewhere in the budget, to trigger serious private sector spending, as much as $1.5 trillion. The scheme has caught grief from both sides of the aisle, and probably won't pass as is. But the opening salvo from the White House sets the tone for the coming debate.

“The president is almost always the main proponent for how to move policy discourse in the country, so the sheer introduction of all of this loosens up a logjam,” says Adie Tomer, who studies infrastructure policy at the Washington, DC, think tank the Brookings Institution. And whatever the details, there’s a chance the basic idea of the bill—that competitive grant process and scant direct funding—will remain.

That should worry the many smaller cities that just can’t chip in significant money for their own infrastructure. A 2017 survey by the National League of Cities, an advocacy group that represents 19,000 cities, towns, and villages across America, found 31 percent of respondents felt “less able” to meet their expenses than in 2016. Nearly of them said infrastructure cost them more than the year before.

Don’t rush to blame this on fiscal irresponsibility. A recent Brookings Institution analysis shows smaller metros have struggled to keep up with their big brothers after the recession, with private employment, income, and the labor participation rate growing more slowly. A smaller, poorer tax base means not a lot of money to compete for a grant program, or for the attention of a private company with a profit motive.