NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Vice President Joe Biden said on Wednesday the nation is on the verge of resurgence thanks to the White House’s decision to buttress the sagging American economy seven years ago with stimulus spending.
During a stop to tout the importance of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Biden toured the Port of New Orleans. He visited a new crane system, paid for with stimulus dollars, aimed at speeding up and expanding the port’s capacity to load containers from ships onto trains and trucks.
The $24.7 million project received $16.7 million in stimulus money, port officials said.
Using the port as an example, Biden called the stimulus funds an essential trigger that allowed the U.S. economy to recover from recession. Seven years later, he said the nation has benefited profoundly.
“We’ve gone from crisis to recovery; we’re now on the verge of resurgence,” Biden said during a speech at the port with oceangoing ships churning by on the Mississippi River behind him.
He said the “smart investment we made at a time of crisis” is now “shaping the future.”
“We knew we had to do something, something really consequential, to begin to turn our economy around and – yes, not a dirty word – stimulate, stimulate growth and more importantly private investment back into the economy,” he said.
He said the $787 billion in stimulus funding helped the nation become more competitive as much of the money went into modernizing the transportation, energy and health-care sectors.
After New Orleans, Biden was headed to Memphis and on Thursday to St. Paul, Minnesota, where he was to highlight similar stimulus projects.