COVINGTON, Ky. — President Joe Biden, along with Kentucky and Ohio officials, visited a notoriously dilapidated bridge over the Ohio River to highlight the nearly $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill lawmakers passed in 2021.
The law offers more than $1.63 billion in federal grants to Ohio and Kentucky to build a companion bridge that will help unclog traffic on the Brent Spence Bridge, which connects Cincinnati and northern Kentucky.
Congestion at the Brent Spence Bridge on Interstates 75 and 71 has for years been a frustration for travelers, a bottleneck on a key shipping corridor and thus a symbol of the nation’s growing infrastructure needs. It was declared functionally obsolete by the Federal Highway Administration in the 1990s.
"This money will allows us to complete this project without tolls," Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said on Wednesday. "Multiple presidents have promised a companion bridge, and this president delivered."
Beshear thanked Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell for supporting the project. McConnell called the funding a "legislative miracle" decades in the making.
"This bridge symbolizes the coming together of both sides, on something that both sides thought was important to try to get an outcome," McConnell said.
Biden also thanked McConnell for his work saying, "he's a man of his word...and he's willing to find common ground to get things done for the country."
The president highlighted the significance of being at the Brent Spence Bridge and the bipartisan efforts to get funding for the project.
"I believe [this] sends an important message to the entire country: We can work together. We can get things done. We can move the nation forward," he said. "We just drop a little bit of our egos and focus on what's needed in the country."
Biden also took the chance to speak on his economic plan for rebuilding infrastructure, creating good-paying jobs that don’t require a four-year degree and revitalizing communities.
"Where is it written that the United States can't lead the world in manufacturing again? We're going to do it!" Biden said. "After years of politics being so divisive, there are bright spots across the nation. This bridge is one of them."
This is Biden's third visit to the commonwealth in a little over a year. He visited once in December 2021 in the aftermath of the western Kentucky tornadoes and again last summer when deadly flooding struck eastern Kentucky.
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