Biden pledges to improve outdated US airports

President Biden on Monday bemoaned the state of U.S. airports as he touted the ways a bipartisan infrastructure law passed last year would help upgrade terminals, improve the passenger experience and reduce emissions.

Biden traveled to Boston to highlight a $62 million investment in Logan Airport through the infrastructure law. The funding will be used to modernize the international terminal of the airport and to improve roadways that keep planes circulating.

The investments will create nearly 6,000 jobs, Biden said, and will help add more ticket counters in the airport, cut down time for passengers trying to make connections and reduce the time planes spend idling on the tarmac, cutting emissions in the process.

Biden hailed the investments as part of a badly needed overhaul of American airports.

“Not a single solitary American airport, not one, ranks in the top 25 in the world,” Biden said with frustration. “The United States of America, not one airport ranks in the top 25 in the world. What in the hell is the matter with us? It means commerce. It means income. It means security. And we don’t even rank in the top 25.”

Biden warned that the lack of infrastructure investment in recent decades had allowed competing countries like China to catch up with America economically. But he argued that the U.S. was finally investing again with the $1 trillion law passed last year with bipartisan support.

The bill includes billions of dollars in funding for airports, some of which has already been allocated both to smaller municipal airports and major ones like Logan.

“Right now with this infrastructure law, America is really getting on the move again,” Biden said. “We’re moving, and your life is going to change for the better.”

Biden has been traveling around the country in recent months to highlight projects funded by the infrastructure law, often joined by Democrats making the case to constituents that they’ve been able to get results for their communities with limited majorities in Congress.

The president will also give a speech while in Boston on his administration’s “cancer moonshot” initiative, which aims to cut the death rate from cancer in half over the next 25 years.