President Joe Biden touted his administration’s efforts to clean up the Great Lakes Thursday alongside endangered Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur, part of the Democratic Party’s efforts to defy expectations in the midterm elections.
Biden and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan met Kaptur in Lorain, Ohio, marking the president’s second trip to support a Democrat facing tough reelection odds in as many weeks. On Feb. 10, he championed Virginia Rep. Abigail Spanberger’s work on prescription drug pricing, and he praised Kaptur throughout his remarks on Thursday for motivating much of his administration’s efforts to clean up the country’s polluted waterways.
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“The historic investment we’re going to make to restore the Great Lakes, lakes, strengthen the region’s economy, provide clean drinking water, clean up our communities, and create good-paying jobs,” Biden stated. “Marcy, I promise you, I’m working like hell.”
Biden’s bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure law directs $1 billion directly toward the cleanup of 22 Great Lakes sites by 2030, which the president said Thursday will improve drinking water quality, boost local tourism and other businesses, and help ease supply chain pressure.
Democrats are hopeful that the local projects the law will fund can help their incumbents overcome a challenging electoral environment, with Biden’s approval ratings low and Republicans favored to eat away at their razor-thin congressional majorities.
Kaptur is currently the longest-tenured woman serving in the House of Representatives, yet state Republicans are expected to redraw her district heading into the 2022 midterm elections. Still, she welcomed Biden’s visit ahead of potentially her toughest reelection race in decades.
“This man is going to go down in history as a great president,” Kaptur told MSN. “We’ve got to help him. Most of these people get in there and all they do is run around the country. They don’t deliver. This man has delivered.”
“Ohio should be saluting him with flags from one end of the state to the other for that alone,” she added of his efforts on the infrastructure law. “That was a big deal. He got hardly any publicity.”
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You can watch Biden’s remarks in full below.