Republicans should make it plain to President Trump that they will vociferously oppose any attempt to strike a $2 trillion infrastructure deal with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

At a time when the federal debt is $22 trillion, Republicans have already joined Trump by agreeing to cut taxes, increase military spending, blow past spending limits created during the Tea Party era, and to ignore entitlement spending. It would be a dereliction of duty to then go along with him on another massive spending binge.

Trump ran on expanding infrastructure, in one of his many breaks from limited government conservatives. Luckily, so far, his efforts to follow through have been thwarted, mainly because the current political environment makes it difficult for anything to pass on a bipartisan basis. We should only hope the partisan disincentives to giving the other side a legislative win will once again doom a massive infrastructure boondoggle.

But Republicans who care about limiting spending should not take any chances. If enough Republicans come out forcefully against the infrastructure legislation, it would help kill this idea in the crib, given that Democrats also have to be concerned about defections from members who conceptually reject the idea of giving Trump more legitimacy by passing a major bipartisan infrastructure package.