President Biden visits a famously dilapidated bridge in Kentucky to highlight massive infrastructure spending
President Joe Biden’s visit to a notoriously ramshackle bridge connecting Ohio and Kentucky is an opportunity for him to demonstrate achievements and discuss the merits of bipartisanship while standing shoulder to shoulder with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell rubs.
The drive on Wednesday is also about hard cash.
“It’s a huge bridge, man,” Biden said this week when asked about his planned trip to the Brent Spence Bridge. “It’s a lot of money. It’s important.”
Indeed, the nearly $1 trillion that Biden’s administration is spending on roads and bridges, broadband networks, and water projects across America will be critical not only to the communities that receive the aid, but also to the political theory of the Democratic Presidents that voters hunger for impartiality that delivers tangible results.
With the prospect of massive, transformative legislation rapidly dwindling this year in a divided Washington, the White House and senior Cabinet officials want to focus instead on selling Biden’s recent accomplishments and demonstrating how the new legislation directly impacts Americans.
This new effort begins when Biden pulls up in northern Kentucky at the perennially congested bridge over the Ohio River that has frustrated motorists for decades. The Infrastructure Act, enacted in late 2021, will provide more than $1.63 billion in federal grants to Ohio and Kentucky to build a service bridge that will help relieve traffic on the Brent Spence.
Other senior government officials are hosting similar events at other major bridges across the United States on Wednesday and Thursday. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg appeared at the Gold Star Memorial Bridge in New London, Connecticut; and White House infrastructure coordinator Mitch Landrieu was supposed to be at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
All bridges will be refunded under the infrastructure bill, which is one of Biden’s outstanding bipartisan achievements.
The Brent Spence, which connects Cincinnati and northern Kentucky, was declared functionally obsolete by the Federal Highway Administration in the 1990s. It has become an outsized symbol of the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, with successive presidents of both parties emphasizing the span of aging while stumbling for better roads and bridges.
In 2011, President Barack Obama reviewed McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner, representing the Cincinnati suburbs, as he stood near the Brent Spence and urged the two Republican leaders to support a jobs package similar to ailing bridges would repair. Six years later, President Donald Trump told a local Fox broadcaster, “I’ve heard of the bridge before. I love the area.”
“We’ll have it fixed,” Trump said of the Brent Spence, which he described as “dangerous.”
As for Biden, he said during a 2021 CNN town hall in Cincinnati that his administration would “fix your damn bridge.” The span was designed for 80,000 vehicles per day, but could easily double this on the narrow lanes.
Biden can start delivering on that promise on Wednesday.
The President is represented in Brent Spence by McConnell, Senator Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, former Senator Rob Portman, R-Ohio, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, a Democrat, and Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, accompanied. Officials hope much of the work on the new project will be completed by 2029.
The White House also invited Republican Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and newly sworn JD Vance of Ohio, according to a White House official, but neither planned to appear with Biden in northern Kentucky.
McConnell, who was already based in Kentucky, will not fly on Air Force One with Biden but will greet him on the tarmac at Cincinnati Northern Kentucky International Airport, according to a person who was not authorized to publicly comment on the minority leader’s travel plans speaking insisted on anonymity.
Biden dismissed any notion that the trip to northern Kentucky was about highlighting his longstanding relationship with McConnell, who was both an ally and a foil during the president’s first two years in office. McConnell was one of 19 Senate Republicans supporting the infrastructure bill and said repairing the Brent Spence has long been a priority.
“This is a bridge that has been a major national issue for 25 years, my most important transportation project in decades. And it’s funded entirely by the infrastructure bill, which I supported,” McConnell told reporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday. “It’s important for me to be there.”
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