By SEUNG MIN KIM and ZEKE MILLER Associated Press, and staff
COVINGTON, Ky. — President Joe Biden held out the promised makeover of a dilapidated bridge over the Ohio River as a symbol of what can happen when Republicans and Democrats work together — even 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 cash under a bipartisan infrastructure law, came as Washington was gripped by the GOP’s inability to unify behind a candidate for House speaker.
The bridge visit is part of a renewed push by Biden to highlight the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, which contains $1 trillion for roads and bridges, broadband networks and water projects across America. The money will be critical not just for the communities getting the help but to the Democratic president’s political theory that voters are hungry for bipartisanship that delivers tangible results.
“I believe it sends an important message, an important message to the entire country,” Biden said from a stage overlooking the soon-to-be-renovated bridge. “We can work together. We can get things done. We can move the nation forward, but just drop a little bit of our egos and focus on what is needed in the country.”
Biden was joined by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell — a frequent foil of Democrats — who was one of 19 Senate Republicans to support the infrastructure law and has said repairing the Brent Spence has long been a priority.
“We all know these are really partisan times. But I always feel that no matter who gets elected, once it’s all over, we ought to look for things that we can agree on and try to do those, even while we have big differences on other things,” McConnell said in brief remarks before Biden took the stage. The GOP senator called the bridge an example of bipartisanship that the “country needs to see.”
“Whether it’s a safer commute to work, or businesses safely and affordably transporting their products, this bridge will make life better for people in Ohio and Kentucky. Today shows just what we can achieve for the region and for the country when everyone works together,” Ohio’s Democratic senator Sherrod Brown said.
The perennially congested bridge connecting Kentucky and Ohio has frustrated motorists for decades. The infrastructure law will offer more than $1.63 billion in federal grants to Ohio and Kentucky for improvements to the eight-mile Brent Spence Bridge Corridor, which runs from the Western Hills Viaduct in Ohio to the Dixie Highway in Kentucky, including construction of a companion bridge that will help unclog traffic on the Brent Spence.
During a 2021 CNN town hall in Cincinnati, Biden vowed that his administration would “fix that damn bridge of yours.”
After his speech, Biden’s motorcade drove over the dilapidated bridge after a stop at a Cincinnati barbecue restaurant.
The Brent Spence, which carries Interstates 71 and 75 between 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 from both parties singling out the aging span as they stumped for better roads and bridges.