“Ensuring that roads get built, bridges get repaired, and drinking water gets improved will be even more challenging given the economic challenges Washington seems oblivious to,” Sununu said. He also urged Biden to address supply chain issues, workforce shortages and the rising cost of construction materials. Chris Sununu, who planned to greet Biden at the airport, sent a letter to the president Tuesday asking him to work with Congress to earmark even more infrastructure funding for the state. “This may not seem like a big bridge, but it saves lives and solves problems,” Biden said. Another bridge over the river was added in 2018. Built in 1939, the bridge has been on the state’s “red list” since 2014 because of its poor condition. On Tuesday, the president visited a bridge that carries state Route 175 over the Pemigewasset River. In a University of New Hampshire Survey Center Granite State Poll last month, his overall favorable rating was 34%, with 53% having an unfavorable view. The law, he said, is estimated to create an extra 2 million jobs a year, and he insisted it also would improve supply chain bottlenecks that have contributed to rising prices for consumers by providing funding for America’s ports, airports and freight rail.īiden defeated Donald Trump by 7 percentage points in New Hampshire in the 2020 election, but his popularity has sagged in the state. In addition to speeding repairs to roads and bridges, Biden touted the law’s investments in upgrading public transit and trains, replacing lead pipes and expanding access to broadband internet. The White House says the infrastructure funding could begin going out within months, and they say it will have a measurable impact on Americans’ lives by helping create new, good-paying jobs.ĭuring his new Hampshire stop Tuesday, Biden said there were 215 bridges deemed “structurally unsafe” and 700 miles of highway in the state listed in poor condition, which he said costs residents heavily each year in gas and repairs. The president, whose poll numbers have continued to drop even after passage of the bill, is pleading for patience from Americans exhausted by the pandemic and concerned about rising inflation.
“As he goes around the country, he’s really going to dig into how these issues will impact people’s everyday lives, what they talk about at their kitchen tables,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki.Īlso this week, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan will take a tour through the South, hitting Louisiana and Texas, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland will visit Massachusetts, California and the state she represented in Congress, New Mexico, and Vice President Kamala Harris will visit Ohio, among top administration officials on the road.
Biden himself has stops Tuesday in Woodstock, New Hampshire, and Wednesday in Detroit to promote the new law as a source of jobs and repairs for aging roads, bridges, pipes and ports while also helping to ease inflation and supply chain woes. The president and members of his Cabinet are moving, too - spreading out around the country to showcase the package. “America is moving again, and your life is going to change for the better,” Biden promised Americans. The president held a splashy bipartisan bill-signing ceremony Monday for hundreds on the White House South Lawn, where lawmakers and union workers cheered and clapped. “Conversations around those kitchen tables that are both profound as they are ordinary: How do I cross the bridge in a snowstorm?”īiden is down in the polls but hopes to use the successful new law to shift the political winds in his direction and provide fresh momentum for his broader $1.85 trillion social spending package now before Congress. “This isn’t esoteric, this isn’t some gigantic bill - it is, but it’s about what happens to ordinary people,” he said. He said it would have a meaningful impact here, from efficient everyday transportation to keeping emergency routes open. Walking across the rural New Hampshire bridge that’s been tagged a priority for repairs since 2014, Biden framed the infrastructure law in direct and human terms. But he returned as president, eager to talk up the billions in investments in upgrading America’s roads, bridges and transit systems that he signed into law Monday. First stop: a snowy, rusty bridge in New Hampshire, a state that gave him no love in last year’s presidential primaries.īiden left the state in February of 2020 before polls had even closed on his fifth-place primary finish. (AP) - Fighting sagging poll ratings, President Joe Biden set out Tuesday on a national tour to persuade everyday Americans of the benefits of his big, just-signed infrastructure plan.
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