At Ohio River bridge, Obama calls out McConnell, Boehner on jobs describes Obama’s recent trip to highlight one of the bridges that he mentioned in his address to Congress about his jobs bill.
Speaking of the Brent Spence Bridge, Obama said the 48-year-old structure was “functionally obsolete.”
Local leaders have worked for more than 10 years to replace or repair the bridge. Current plans have a $2.4 billion price tag because they involve a 7.8-mile stretch of I-75 in the two states.
The bridge is a linchpin along the nation’s busiest freight corridor. About 4 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product — or about $400 billion in goods — travels across it each year. But it was designed to carry 80,000 vehicles a day. Today, it carries about 170,000, Obama said.
There may be some who have trouble conceiving of the connection between infrastructure repair and job creation. Imagine the impact on jobs if this bridge that carries about $400 billion in goods each year were to collapse due to lack of repairs. I would think that spending $2.4 billion to repair or replace the bridge to make sure that the flow of good is not interrupted would have a very good return on investment. That would seem to me a better investment than giving an equivalent amount of money to the wealthy “job creators” who would just turn around and park that money in US government bonds instead of creating and maintaining jobs.