President Joe Biden spoke in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Friday to talk about infrastructure—in an unfortunately well-timed visit. Just hours before his speech was scheduled, a nearby bridge collapse heightened his message of the criticality of the long-delayed infrastructure spending. Three people were injured in the collapse.
That bridge was on a bridge maintenance list in Dec. 2018—in the middle of the previous administration’s four-year-long infrastructure week. Biden took an emergency detour before the speech to see the collapsed Fern Hollow Bridge. “You all realize—I’ve been coming to Pittsburgh a long time and as a former Pennsylvanian,” he said. “But I didn’t realize there are literally more bridges in Pittsburgh than in any other city in the world. Did you know? More than in Venice.”
“And we’re going to—they’re going to fix them all. Not a joke. This is going to be a gigantic change. And there’s 43,000 nationwide. And we’re sending the money,” he said. That was of course the theme of his later speech at Mill 19, a Pittsburgh steel mill. “We finally got it done,” Biden said, “a bipartisan infrastructure law, including the largest investment in our nation’s bridges since the Eisenhower administration put together the interstate highway system. I might add, this is the first time in the country’s history that we dedicated a national program to repair and upgrade bridges.”
Biden also addressed a U.S. competitiveness bill that the Senate has passed, but hasn’t been considered in the House. “We need a future that’s made in America,” he said. “That means using products, parts, materials built right here in the United States of America. It means bringing manufacturing back, jobs back, building the supply chains here at home, not outsourcing abroad so we have better jobs and lower prices here.”
And he talked about the need for Build Back Better and the provisions included in it, forcefully.
Imagine being a parent, making the minimum wage or twice the minimum wage, and having a child with Type 1 diabetes […] knowing that you have no insurance, knowing you cannot get that money for the insulin. Your child may die. In addition to your child, it strips you of your dignity, damn it! Can you imagine, looking at your child and you know what they need. And not be able to do it? Many of you have lost children, seen it. Imagine. It’s outrageous!
We have an answer. […] The same is true for home- and community-based services for seniors, and people with disabilities.
Hopefully, that’s the energy Biden takes into his next meeting with Joe Manchin.
Biden continued to stress the “bipartisan” part of the infrastructure law, giving Republicans far more credit than is their due. Of course, they’re going to take it anyway, and pretend like they’re responsible for fixing things. Like Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, who voted against the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
Toomey, along with every other Republican had four years with the former guy to do something about that bridge, and managed to do pretty much nothing but tax cuts for the rich and jamming the courts with unqualified hyper-partisans. They should get no credit for this.