NEW ORLEANS — President Barack Obama traveled to this waterfront city Friday to push a plan to spend more money on ports from Miami to Tacoma as a way to put Americans back to work.
“Nationally we’re falling behind. We’re relying on old stuff. . . . We should have some new stuff,” Obama told a crowd of 650 gathered at the Port of New Orleans. “That is going to help us grow and keep pace with global competition.”
Obama has proposed spending $50 billion on improvements on roads and bridges, airports and ports as he looks to boost the U.S.’s infrastructure investment, which has dropped 50 percent since 1960 and lags behind other nations, including China.
“We should close wasteful tax loopholes that don’t help our jobs, don’t grow our economy, and then invest that money in things that actually do create jobs and grow our economy,” he said. “And one of those things is building new roads and bridges and schools and ports. That creates jobs.”
Obama arrived in New Orleans as criticism of his health care law mounts. The website where consumers enroll continues to have glitches, and millions of people are losing insurance plans Obama promised they could keep. In a national TV interview Thursday, the president apologized for the problems.
