Mitch Landrieu: “I came to the floor to thank Senator Murray for her extraordinary work on the bridge replacement amendment and for the…”

“I came to the floor to thank Senator Murray for her extraordinary work on the bridge replacement amendment and for the colleagues--60-- who joined her in supporting this amendment. It is important to all of our States, but particularly for Louisiana, that is struggling, like so many of our other States are, to find funding for critical infrastructure. We, of course, 2 years ago, had the collapse of an infrastructure, of our levees. We have great impacts on many of our highways. Of course, the collapse of the bridge in Minnesota has caused us all to refocus on the importance of this issue. We have over 4,000 bridges in the State of Louisiana alone, that is including overpasses over highways. Nearly 30 percent of the total are categorized as structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. In fact, one of the bridges I have outlined in my statement is the Red River Bridge that was built in 1936. It alone will cost $100 million.”