Buttigieg Calls on Congress for Extra Cash to Collapsed Baltimore Bridge

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Maryland Democrats on Sunday urged Congress to authorize further federal {dollars} wanted to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore after it collapsed last week.

“I hope and expect this, too, will be a bipartisan priority,” Mr. Buttigieg stated on CBS Information’s “Face the Nation.” He cited the case of a Minnesota bridge whose $250 million reconstruction plan was accepted by Congress in a unanimous vote two days after its collapse in August 2007, and added that “the pitch is, your district could be next, and this has historically been bipartisan.”

The Division of Transportation introduced on Thursday that it had allotted $60 million in emergency federal freeway funding towards rebuilding the bridge. That preliminary batch of cash, which the division known as “a down payment,” is unlikely to cowl the total value of development that specialists say might require hundreds of millions of {dollars}.

The push for extra federal funding displays officers’ perception {that a} extended disruption to the Port of Baltimore would trigger ripple results throughout the U.S. economic system. The harbor has one of many largest amenities within the nation for wheeled cargo reminiscent of vehicles and vans, and it serves as a key logistics hub for the auto industry for each imports and exports.

“People have to remember: This is not a Baltimore catastrophe, not a Maryland catastrophe. This is a national economic catastrophe,” Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland, a Democrat, stated on Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We need to make sure we’re actually moving quickly to get the American economy going again because the Port of Baltimore is instrumental in our larger economic growth.”

Mayor Brandon Scott of Baltimore, additionally a Democrat, echoed Mr. Moore’s argument that the bridge collapse — which has shut down the harbor — will not be an area tragedy however a choke on the U.S. economic system.

“This port is the No. 1 port for cars and farm equipment, so this matters to folks in rural North Carolina, in Kansas, in Iowa,” Mr. Scott stated. “This should not be something that has anything — or any conversation — around” social gathering strains.

President Biden stated final week that the federal authorities would pay for “the entire cost” of rebuilding the Baltimore bridge, urging Congress to affix his efforts to pump federal {dollars} into reconstruction efforts.

However his promise was met with a right away pushback from Republican lawmakers, and even some in his own party, who raised issues across the federal authorities’s assuming the total value of reconstruction with out first holding the shipowners accountable.

Consultant Dan Meuser, a Republican of Pennsylvania, known as Mr. Biden’s pledge for federal funding “outrageous” and “a knee-jerk spend reaction.”

Clearing the particles, which is obstructing an important transport lane to the port, will happen within the subsequent few weeks, engineering specialists stated. The total restoration of the Port of Baltimore may very well be a few years forward, as engineers count on the Francis Scott Key Bridge to take a number of years to rebuild.

The price of clearing the particles from the bridge collapse is absolutely lined by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which maintains the transport channel in Baltimore.

Adeel Hassan contributed reporting.