President Joe Biden on Wednesday held out the promised makeover of a dilapidated bridge over the Ohio River as a logo of what can occur when Republicans and Democrats work together — at the same time as he condemned what he labeled an “embarrassing” scene of GOP disarray back in Washington.
The Democratic president’s trip to the Brent Spence Bridge, which is getting a load of federal money under the bipartisan infrastructure law, got here as Washington was gripped by the GOP’s inability to unify behind a candidate for House speaker.
“To have a Congress that may’t function is just embarrassing,” Biden said before he left Kentucky to return to Washington. “We’re the best nation on the earth. How could that be?” Earlier on the White House he said that the stalemate over who would succeed Democrat Nancy Pelosi as speaker now that the Republicans control the House was “not my problem.”
However the discord is fresh evidence that Biden’s probabilities of securing massive, transformational laws have all but evaporated in a divided Washington, where the main focus is ready to show to GOP investigations of the Biden administration and battles over essentials like funding the federal government and meeting federal debt obligations.
That has the White House and top Cabinet officials hoping to direct the country’s focus to Biden’s achievements during his first two years in office and demonstrating how the brand new laws directly affect Americans, while appealing to newly empowered Republicans to seek out additional areas of cooperation in the brand new Congress.
The bridge visit is a component of a renewed push by Biden to spotlight the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, which comprises $1 trillion for roads and bridges, broadband networks and water projects across America. The cash might be critical not only for the communities getting the assistance but to the Democratic president’s political theory that voters are hungry for bipartisanship that delivers tangible results.
“I feel it sends a very important message, a very important message to all the country,” Biden said from a stage overlooking the soon-to-be-renovated bridge. “We are able to work together. We are able to get things done. We are able to move the nation forward, but just drop slightly little bit of our egos and deal with what is required within the country.”
Biden was joined by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell — a frequent foil of Democrats — who greeted the president on the local airport and and rode with him in his limousine to the riverfront. McConnell was considered one of 19 Senate Republicans to support the infrastructure law and has said repairing the Brent Spence has long been a priority.
“Everyone knows these are really partisan times. But I all the time feel that regardless of who gets elected, once it’s throughout, we must search for things that we are able to agree on and take a look at to do those, even while we’ve big differences on other things,” McConnell said briefly remarks before Biden took the stage. The GOP senator called the bridge an example of bipartisanship that the “country must see.”
Democrats’ stronger-than-expected showing within the midterms allowed their party to retain control of the Senate at the same time as the House fell to Republicans.
On Tuesday, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the ostensible GOP pick for speaker, didn’t win the required majority on three ballots — the primary time in a century that a speaker hasn’t been chosen on the primary ballot. Members-elect returned to the chamber on Wednesday for added balloting with no clear path to a resolution.
On the bridge, Biden made light of the House drama, quipping that a newly elected House member couldn’t attend the event because “he’s coping with attempting to determine who’s gonna be the following speaker,” before appealing for lawmakers of each parties to look for common ground within the 12 months ahead.
“After years of politics being so divisive, there are vibrant spots across the country,” Biden said. “The Brent Spence bridge is considered one of them. A bridge that continues and connects different centuries, different states, different political parties — a bridge to the vision of America I do know all of us consider in where we are able to work together to get things done.”
The perennially congested bridge connecting Kentucky and Ohio has frustrated motorists for many years. The infrastructure law will offer greater than $1.63 billion in federal grants to Ohio and Kentucky to construct a companion bridge that can help unclog traffic on the Brent Spence.
Other top administration officials are holding similar events Wednesday and Thursday at other major bridges within the U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris was stopping by the gathering of bridges crossing the Calumet River in Chicago; Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was appearing on the Gold Star Memorial Bridge in Recent London, Connecticut; and White House infrastructure coordinator Mitch Landrieu was to be on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco on Thursday with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
All of the bridges will get latest funding under the infrastructure law, which is considered one of Biden’s marquee bipartisan accomplishments.
After his speech, Biden’s motorcade drove over the dilapidated bridge after a stop at a Cincinnati barbecue restaurant.
Landrieu told reporters on Air Force One which Biden’s appearance with McConnell was “really necessary to exhibit that these two individuals who have been friends for a very long time and who don’t all the time see eye to eye have put their country first.”
The Brent Spence, which carries Interstates 71 and 75 between Cincinnati and northern Kentucky, was declared functionally obsolete by the Federal Highway Administration within the Nineteen Nineties. It has turn into an outsized symbol of the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, with successive presidents from each parties singling out the aging span as they stumped for higher roads and bridges.
In 2011, President Barack Obama name-checked McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner, who represented the Cincinnati suburbs, as he stood near the Brent Spence and pushed the 2 Republican leaders to support a jobs package that will fix similarly ailing bridges. Six years later, President Donald Trump told an area Fox station that “I’ve already heard concerning the bridge. I really like the realm.”
“We’ll get it fixed,” Trump said concerning the Brent Spence, which he called “dangerous.”
As for Biden, he said during a 2021 CNN town hall in Cincinnati that his administration would “fix that rattling bridge of yours.”