Biden touts bill at rusty bridge in New Hampshire
WOODSTOCK, N.H. — Fighting sagging poll ratings, President Biden set out Tuesday on a national tour to persuade everyday Americans of the benefits of his big, justsigned infrastructure plan. First stop: a snowy, rusty bridge in New Hampshire, a state that gave him no love in last year’s presidential primaries.
Biden left the state in February of 2020 before polls had even closed on his fifth-place primary finish. 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.
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. He said it would have a meaningful impact here, from efficient everyday transportation to keeping emergency routes open.
“This isn’t esoteric, this isn’t some gigantic bill — it is, but it’s about what happens to ordinary people,” he said. “Conversations around those kitchen tables that are both profound as they are ordinary: How do I cross the bridge in a snowstorm?”
Biden 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.
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.
“America is moving again, and your life is going to change for the better,” Biden promised Americans.
The president and members of his Cabinet are moving, too — spreading out around the country to showcase the package. Biden himself has stops Tuesday in Woodstock, N.H.,
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.
“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.
During 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.