GRANITE CITY, Ill. (AP) — Insisting the five-year-old federal stimulus package staved off a U.S. depression, Vice President Joe Biden toured the mucky site of a future Mississippi River harbor near an Illinois steel town and pressed for continued infrastructure spending he says has helped define the nation.

Biden, speaking to hundreds of gatherers in a sprawling port’s unheated warehouse, stopped short of espousing any follow-up to the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act he called vital in softening the U.S. recession since President Barack Obama signed the measure in 2009.