President Obama, speaking before a bridge on the Ohio-Kentucky border that carries heavy truck traffic, made a pitch for infrastructure spending and his jobs plan.
The president spoke Thursday afternoon in front of the Brent Spence Bridge, the Interstate 75 span over the Ohio River that connects Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati, as many trucks rolled over the bridge behind him.
Because of extensive traffic bottlenecks, “shipping companies try to have their trucks avoid the bridge, but that only ends up costing them more money,” Obama said.
The bridge, listed as “functionally obsolete” on a national bridge inventory, links the home states of House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who have been largely critical of the president’s jobs package but support fixing the bridge, the Detroit Free Press reported.
Obama called on Congress to pass his $447 billion jobs bill, which would include infrastructure spending to improve roads and bridges. At least 70,000 bridges across the country need repair, the Associated Press reported.
