Biden heads to Kentucky to highlight cash for aging bridge

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden's visit to a notoriously dilapidated bridge connecting Ohio and Kentucky is a chance for him to showcase accomplishments and talk up the virtues of bipartisanship while rubbing shoulders with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

The trip on Wednesday is also about cold, hard cash.

“It’s a giant bridge, man,” Biden said this week when asked about his planned trip to the Brent Spence Bridge. “It’s a lot of money. It’s important.”

Indeed, the nearly $1 trillion that Biden's administration is doling out for roads and bridges, broadband networks and water projects across America 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.

As the prospects for massive, transformational legislating diminish rapidly this year in a divided Washington, the White House and top Cabinet officials aim to focus instead on selling Biden’s recent achievements and demonstrating how the new laws directly affect Americans.

That new effort kicks off as Biden stops in northern Kentucky at the perennially congested bridge spanning the Ohio River that has frustrated motorists for decades. The infrastructure law enacted in late 2021 will offer 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.

Other top administration officials are holding similar events Wednesday and Thursday at other major bridges in the U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is stopping by the collection of bridges crossing the Calumet River in Chicago; Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was appearing at the Gold Star Memorial Bridge in New London, Connecticut; and...