President Biden vowed Tuesday to rebuild Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge after it collapsed into the water when a cargo ship rammed into it, echoing what some Maryland officials said earlier but adding that he expects the federal government to foot the bill.

“It’s my intention that the federal government will pay for the entire cost of reconstructing that bridge, and I expect the Congress to support my effort,” Biden said in remarks at the White House. “This is going to take some time, but the people of Baltimore can count on us though to stick with them at every step of the way until the port is reopen and the bridge is rebuilt.”

He said he spoke with Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) on Tuesday morning, as well as Maryland officials including its congressional delegation and two U.S. senators. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg traveled to the Baltimore site.

  • tsonfeir@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    I’m pretty sure they were going to do that with or without him. the party responsible for the incident should be the one fitting the bill

    • tiramichu@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      Yes, but ascertaining liability and securing a payout is a process that may take many years of being dragged through the courts, if it is even successful at all.

      The government making money available immediately does help get things going with less uncertainty about who can foot the bill.

    • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      Bridges are fucking expensive, I’m not certain if the government will be able to recover a significant portion of the cost.

    • popcap200@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      Someone doesn’t remember the 9/11 responder funding, hurricane funding, the rhetoric around COVID funding, etc. etc.

    • RubberDuck@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Footing the bill… but yes. Then again, maybe with the amount of shipping traffic a tunnel makes more sense.

      • jwhardcastle@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        We have two nearby tunnels. They’ll be packed now. But hazmat trucks and larger oversized vehicles can’t go through tunnels. There’s also a longer way around the northwest of the city, but that’ll be crowded now too. That’s where everyone lives. The bridge over the river was the interstate trucking corridor from DC to Philly up to New York and Boston.

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        9 months ago

        The problem was the boat. It has done this kind of shit before in 2016.

        • FigMcLargeHuge@sh.itjust.works
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          9 months ago

          The problem was the boat.

          … and the bridge. Evidently there’s no safety structure around the support that would have prevented a ship from hitting the bridge.

          • Garbanzo@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            They thought about installing bumpers but decided it was too expensive. Gotta wonder how the cost compares to replacing the whole fucking bridge.

            • SuckMyWang@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              Remember everything seems obvious in hindsight. I’m sure there’s a significant number of bridges with no bumpers have operated without incident for their lifetimes.

              • Garbanzo@lemmy.world
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                9 months ago

                A significant number of bridges that would block a major port if they collapsed? I doubt it.

                • pmmeyourtits@ani.social
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                  9 months ago

                  Pretty sure the HRBT down in Hampton roads could cause such a blockage. We live in a capitalistic society, why spend a dollar to protect for a risk that could only happen once every couple hundred thousand ships tends to be the usual thought process unfortunately.

            • Billiam@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              …this is a joke, right? I don’t know anything about bridge engineering or shipping, but what kind of bumper could stop a couple-million-pound ship, even if it was unpowered?

              • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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                9 months ago

                Probably a large fender system designed to get the ship to slow down by breaking apart to absorb the energy.

                • Natanael@slrpnk.net
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                  9 months ago

                  Do you understand HOW BIG it needs to be and how deep the anchoring need to be to do that? It would be more expensive than building the bridge to not have single points of failure

              • SuperIce@lemmy.world
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                9 months ago

                The fenders on the SF Bay Bridge have successfully prevented damage to the bridge twice so far. Every bridge in the SF Bay Area has fenders to prevent exactly what happened in Baltimore. They work.

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            9 months ago

            It was a 70’s bridge built to take collisions from 70’s boats of 1/3 the weight.

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    9 months ago

    People keep saying “Key Bridge” and idk if they’re referring to the name or the fact that it’s a vital port for the east coast

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    9 months ago

    Well, obviously.

    Its not like they are gonna go “you know what, it can’t fall any further, lets just leave well enough alone.”

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        9 months ago

        Well, axchually… toll roads and bridges are a thing. Even if they’re built by a gov’t that recoups its’ costs, I’d say that counts as a user-pay situation.

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          A toll is a kind of tax. There’s a one-time tax to build the bridge, and then a per-use tax to maintain it.

    • Natanael@slrpnk.net
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      Is this satire?

      If not, do you want to wait 20 years until the lawsuits against the shipping companies (yes, plural) are all done and appeals finished before you can extract a few million to cover part of the multiple hundred millions a rebuild will cost?

      Infrastructure is too important.

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      9 months ago

      I get ya man, corporations steal constantly and when they break stuff we pay for it. The corpos won’t pay their fuckin taxes and then break shit.

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    “It’s my intention that the federal government will pay for the entire cost of reconstructing that bridge, and I expect the Congress to support my effort,” Biden said in remarks at the White House. “This is going to take some time, but the people of Baltimore can count on us though to stick with them at every step of the way until the port is reopen and the bridge is rebuilt.”

    Any minute now… Just like his other “vows”.

    Also, crazy how the headline makes it sound sure to happen, and his actual statement is filled with weasel words.

    Give politicians credit for what they do, not for they “vow” to do.

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      9 months ago

      Give politicians credit for what they do, not for they “vow” to do.

      Good point, and there’s a lot of credit to give to Biden on the economy, judges, infrastructure, and even some steps on climate change. So yeah, I think this bridge will probably be rebuilt as he said.

      But you’re right- we know that because of what he’s done, not what he says. Always good to keep that in mind.

      • Nudding@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Don’t forget record oil production, record homelessness, and his strike breaking!

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          It will surprise no one to know that 2/3rds of this is total factual bullshit (edit: grossly misleading). I touched elsewhere on some of the big substantive things like wage inequality or emissions reductions that have improved dramatically under his presidency, but the homelessness I don’t think had been brought up. So:

          • Homelessness has been going down steadily, and we’re nowhere near the 647,000 people record set around 2007. There was, recently, a big jump up between 2018 and 2020. I guess Biden really fucked up letting it get away from him during that time before we leveled off the growth again just recently? (Edit: This is 100% wrong – homelessness did in fact spike to record levels in 2023 after the end of that chart, when Covid aid ran out)
          • 2023 was, as far as I know, the biggest year for strikes in history. If Biden’s a strike breaker he’s doing a real shitty job at it. He did break the rail strike which would have done some amount of damage to the wider economy (you know, the inflation that some people like to blame Biden for?), but after that happened his labor department kept working the issue with the railroads and got the workers the sick days they were striking for in the first place.

          Record oil production is accurate. I would balance that against the war in Ukraine, record inflation, his positive action on the emissions side which is the biggest single action a US president has ever taken on the climate… but yes there’s some amount of actual nuance and judgement there. The other two bullet points are respectively purely made up and grossly unfair, though.

          • Nudding@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            Yeah what with every month being the hottest month ever recorded for the past year, we’re gonna need that oil for our air conditioners, am I right?

            • stanleytweedle@lemmy.world
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              Yeah, Biden’s not going to resolve global climate change for you by summer so I guess you should vote for Trump or just stay home ;)

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                9 months ago

                I think I’ll stay here in Canada. The weather is so much more survivable here.

                • stanleytweedle@lemmy.world
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                  Yeah nobody has ever died of exposure in Canada ;) But you have lots of fossil fuels to keep you warm… wait- weren’t you whining about that a second ago?

        • eskimofry@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Wait i thought you wanted to hear what he’s done… not these other things you’re conveniently adding on after hearing what he has done?

        • Audacious@sh.itjust.works
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          I’ll never forget what he did to the railroad workers. Then he goes to a different union rally to pretend he cares about the working class. I guess the good thing was he made me see how powerless unions are in america, where there are extra harmful fees to going on strike.

          • protist@mander.xyz
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            Didn’t the Biden Admin keep working behind the scenes after denying that strike and help the railroad unions get the sick leave they wanted in the end?

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            It’s literally a society based around money. If you don’t got any, you don’t matter.

    • AbidanYre@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Jesus Christ dude, it’s been like 12 hours. What do you expect him to have done by now?

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        What would be cool is not use federal funds to repair a bridge a billions dollar company damaged…

        If I drive into a house, me or my insurance has to pay for it…

        But when a billion dollar corporation destroys critical infrastructure, our tax dollars pay for it?

        Explain that to me.

        Why do we pay for our mistakes and companies mistakes?

        When do companies pay?

        • AbidanYre@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          That’s quite a change from:

          Any minute now… Just like his other “vows”.

          In the span of two comments you’ve gone from complaining that he never does anything to complaining that be shouldn’t be doing this.

          It’s almost like you’re not here in good faith…

              • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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                So I’m confused…

                You think this will be fixed quickly and taxpayers won’t have to pay for it?

                Because that’s not what Biden said…

                Have you read the link yet?

                It’s my intention that the federal government will pay for the entire cost of reconstructing that bridge, and I expect the Congress to support my effort,” Biden said in remarks at the White House. “This is going to take some time, but the people of Baltimore can count on us though to stick with them at every step of the way until the port is reopen and the bridge is rebuilt.”

                Like, you’re calling me full of shit for what Biden’s saying

                • ieatpillowtags@lemm.ee
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                  See there you go again with your weird fucking posts, who are you even talking to? You’re having a conversation with yourself and trying to stir shit up. Very inauthentic behavior.

            • AbidanYre@lemmy.world
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              Yeah, but it seems pretty disingenuous to complain that Biden is simultaneously making empty promises but not actually doing anything while also wasting taxpayer money fixing a bridge.

              • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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                Yeah, the government never wastes money to accomplish nothing…

                It’s not like trump shut down the government a couple years ago to secure funding for a non existent border wall…

                Side note:

                Have you ever wondered about a Memento reboot where only one person in the world retained their long term memories?

                Every one else just forgets everything after like 20 seconds and gets taken advantage of by a small group of psychopaths?

                • exanime@lemmy.world
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                  Yeah, the government never wastes money to accomplish nothing…

                  So now you are certain the bridge will be rebuilt?

                • AbidanYre@lemmy.world
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                  So, just to recap.

                  First, you complained that Biden is nothing but empty promises.

                  Then you complained that taxpayers have to pay for the bridge (if it was an empty promise nobody is paying for it)

                  Now you’re complaining that it’s all a waste of money and nothing will be accomplished anyway (do you think we, as a society, are incapable of building a bridge?)

                  It kind of sounds like you’re just going to bitch and moan no matter what.

                  I remember Trump shutting down the government. Do you think this situation is remotely similar? Does half the population not want this bridge in place?

                  If that remake does happen, you’re not the one that’s going to be keeping your memory. You can’t even seem to remember what point you were trying to argue when you can just scroll up and read it again.

        • hannes3120@feddit.de
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          9 months ago

          The company will pay eventually - it’s mostly about making the money available as soon as possible before the legal responsibilities are cleared up

          • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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            The company will pay eventually

            Hahahahhahaha, hahahhahaha…

            Deep breathe

            Hahahahahhahahaha

            • TheKingBombOmbKiller@lemm.ee
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              So the US Government should not make money available ASAP to rebuild the bridge, but instead wait for the laughable scenario that the company pays for the damages?

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      The quick list is biggest single action on climate change in US history, estimated to hit a 40% reduction in emissions by 2030, $144 billion forgiveness of student loan debt, lowest unemployment in 20 years (or 50 depending on how you count) even after the Covid apocalypse which most countries haven’t even dug out from yet, wage inequality going down for the first time in I have no idea how long, Amazon paying $3 billion per quarter in corporate tax instead of the negative $1.2 billion they were paying before his corporate tax reform.

      He vowed / attempted to do a certain amount more than that, yes, and getting that more stuff done also would be great too, but it’s not like he’s just been fucking off playing golf this whole time.

      For what reason the news doesn’t highlight that type of stuff and instead focuses on whatever they focus on, I have no idea.

      • yarr@feddit.nl
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        For what reason the news doesn’t highlight that type of stuff and instead focuses on whatever they focus on, I have no idea.

        Easy, they want outrage. Biden following through on some mundane promise made some time ago riles up exactly no one, therefore it doesn’t get a headline. Modern media is extremely predictable in their approach.

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          Ha, we’ll see. I liked the extensive copy-paste with its sourcing, but mods apparently didn’t like me copy-pasting the same huge comment into any thread where someone started up with “we all agree Biden didn’t do shit, it’s so well known I don’t even need to go into details, it’s definitely just something we all agree on…”. I do kind of get the objection to doing that, so I retyped it this time but still gave a link to the places the sources are found. We’ll see what the mods do with it.

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      9 months ago

      Not to defend politicians or journalists… But the headline is clear this is just a promise to act someday