Former New Orleans mayor Landrieu to manage Biden's $1T plan

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden has chosen arsenic supervisor of his $1 trillion infrastructure program Mitch Landrieu, who arsenic New Orleans politician pushed the metropolis into betterment aft the devastation from Hurricane Katrina.

Landrieu volition beryllium tasked with coordinating crossed national agencies to enactment connected roads, ports, bridges and airports, the White House said Sunday. Biden is expected to motion the infrastructure measure into instrumentality connected Monday.

Landrieu, 61, was formerly the Louisiana lieutenant politician and took implicit arsenic politician of New Orleans successful 2010, 5 years aft Katrina swamped the metropolis and arsenic the area's betterment stalled — and arsenic a monolithic BP lipid spill successful the Gulf of Mexico polluted the state's coastline. He secured billions successful national backing for roads, schools parks and infrastructure, and turned New Orleans "into 1 of America’s large comeback stories,” the White House said successful a statement.

Ad

“I americium thankful to the president and honored to beryllium tasked with coordinating the largest infrastructure concern successful generations,” Landrieu said successful the statement. “Our enactment volition necessitate beardown partnerships crossed the authorities and with authorities and section leaders, concern and labour to make good-paying jobs and rebuild America for the mediate class."

When Landrieu was mayor, helium gained nationalist designation erstwhile helium removed 4 Jim Crow-era monuments from the New Orleans landscape, including statues of 3 Confederate icons.

Landrieu launched the E Pluribus Unum Fund successful 2018, which aims to interruption barriers of contention and people by cultivating leaders who tin physique communal ground.

The infrastructure package is simply a historical concern by immoderate measure, 1 that Biden compares successful its breadth to the gathering of the interstate road strategy successful the past period oregon the transcontinental railroad the period before. He called it a “blue-collar blueprint to rebuilding America.”

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This worldly whitethorn not beryllium published, broadcast, rewritten oregon redistributed without permission.