Politics

Biden touts infrastructure bill at snowy, rusty span in Due north.H.

"America is moving over again and your life is going to change for the better."

Under the funding formula in the neb, New Hampshire will receive $1.1 billion for federal-aid highways and $225 one thousand thousand for bridges. New York Times

By COLLEEN LONG and HOLLY RAMER , Associated Press

WOODSTOCK, N.H. (AP) — Fighting sagging poll ratings, President Joe Biden set out Tuesday on a national bout to persuade everyday Americans of the benefits of his large, just-signed infrastructure plan. First end: a snowy, rusty bridge in New Hampshire, a land that gave him no dearest in last year's presidential primaries.

Biden left the land in February of 2020 earlier polls had fifty-fifty airtight on his fifth-place primary terminate. But he returned as president, eager to talk upwardly the billions in investments in upgrading America'south roads, bridges and transit systems that he signed into police Mon.

Walking across the rural New Hampshire bridge that'due south been tagged a priority for repairs since 2014, Biden framed the infrastructure law in direct and human being terms. He said it would take a meaningful affect here, from efficient everyday transportation to keeping emergency routes open.

"This isn't esoteric, this isn't some gigantic neb — it is, but it's about what happens to ordinary people," he said. "Conversations effectually those kitchen tables that are both profound as they are ordinary: How exercise I cross the span in a snowstorm?"

Biden is downwards in the polls but hopes to use the successful new police to shift the political winds in his management and provide fresh momentum for his broader $one.85 trillion social spending packet now before Congress.

The president held a splashy bipartisan bill-signing ceremony Monday for hundreds on the White House Southward Lawn, where lawmakers and wedlock workers cheered and clapped.

"America is moving once again, and your life is going to change for the better," Biden promised Americans.

The president and members of his Chiffonier are moving, as well — spreading out around the country to showcase the package. Biden himself has stops Tuesday in Woodstock, New Hampshire, and Wednesday in Detroit to promote the new police force as a source of jobs and repairs for aging roads, bridges, pipes and ports while also helping to ease inflation and supply chain woes.

"As he goes around the state, he's really going to dig into how these issues will impact people's everyday lives, what they talk nigh at their kitchen tables," said White House press secretary Jen Psaki.

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Likewise this week, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan volition have a tour through the South, hitting Louisiana and Texas, Interior Secretarial assistant Deb Haaland will visit Massachusetts, California and the land she represented in Congress, New United mexican states, and Vice President Kamala Harris will visit Ohio, among top administration officials on the route.

The president, whose poll numbers have continued to drop even later passage of the bill, is pleading for patience from Americans exhausted by the pandemic and concerned about rising inflation. The White House says the infrastructure funding could brainstorm going out within months, and they say information technology will have a measurable impact on Americans' lives by helping create new, skillful-paying jobs.

During his new Hampshire stop Tuesday, Biden said there were 215 bridges deemed "structurally dangerous" and 700 miles of highway in the state listed in poor condition, which he said costs residents heavily each year in gas and repairs.

In addition to speeding repairs to roads and bridges, Biden touted the constabulary's investments in upgrading public transit and trains, replacing lead pipes and expanding access to broadband internet. The police, 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'south ports, airports and freight rail.

Biden defeated Donald Trump past seven percent points in New Hampshire in the 2020 election, just his popularity has sagged in the country. In a University of New Hampshire Survey Centre Granite Country Poll last month, his overall favorable rating was 34%, with 53% having an unfavorable view.

On Tuesday, the president visited a span that carries country Route 175 over the Pemigewasset River. Congenital in 1939, the bridge has been on the state'due south "red list" since 2014 because of its poor condition. Some other bridge over the river was added in 2018.

"This may not seem like a large bridge, but information technology saves lives and solves issues," Biden said.

New Hampshire'due south Republican Gov. 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. He also urged Biden to address supply chain issues, workforce shortages and the rising cost of construction materials.

"Ensuring that roads get built, bridges go repaired, and drinking water gets improved will be even more challenging given the economic challenges Washington seems oblivious to," Sununu said.

Under the funding formula in the neb, New Hampshire will receive $1.1 billion for federal-help highways and $225 one thousand thousand for bridges, the White House said.

The infrastructure nib overall contains $110 billion to repair crumbling highways, bridges and roads. Co-ordinate to the White House, 173,000 full miles or near 280,000 kilometers of U.S. highways and major roads and 45,000 bridges are in poor status. The police force has almost $40 billion for bridges, the single largest dedicated span investment since the structure of the national highway system, according to the Biden administration.

Many of the particulars of how the coin is spent will be upwardly to land governments. Biden has named quondam New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu as the liaison between the White Firm and united states of america to aid ensure things run smoothly and to foreclose waste matter and fraud.

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