White House launches new branding for infrastructure law: ‘Building a Better America’
By Kate Sullivan and Maegan Vazquez, CNN
The White House on Wednesday launched a new website and an accompanying brand to promote the bipartisan infrastructure law, which was on full display during President Joe Biden’s trip on Wednesday to Kansas City, Missouri.
The new “Building a Better America” branding will also be used at other events, news conferences, tours and listening sessions when Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and various Cabinet officials travel across the country to sell the law, a White House official said.
The website that’s part of the updated branding, Build.gov, went live Wednesday morning. In the coming months it will serve as a hub for governors, mayors, tribal leaders, business owners, union members and other Americans to learn more about the bipartisan infrastructure law, according to the official. It will showcase how the massive $1.2 trillion law is being implemented and delivering for communities.
During his Kansas City speech on Wednesday, Biden adopted the new slogan and shared the new website.
“We’re here to talk about rebuilding America, investing in America and building a better America,” Biden said, adding that “our ‘Building a Better America’ tour is going to give a chance to meet people where they work and here, with the communities they live in” and “showcase how our bipartisan infrastructure law, which has changed their lives for the better, came about because we worked together.”
Along with highlighting how the infrastructure law passed with support from both Republicans and Democrats in Congress, he also discussed how the law will help rebuild roads and bridges, replace water infrastructure and create jobs.
The White House official says “Building a Better America” is meant to capture the administration’s goals of creating more union jobs, centering equity in all of its work, combating the climate crisis and building up sustainable and resilient energy infrastructure and investing in American-made products and manufacturing.
“We’re constantly messaging — as you know — to the American people every day, making sure they know what it is that the President is doing to make their lives easier, to deliver for them and we’re constantly looking for different avenues and different ways to do that, and so this is part of it,” principal deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One on Wednesday.
The President and Democrats in Congress are hoping Americans will see tangible benefits from the law ahead of next year’s midterm elections. Biden has tapped former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu to oversee the implementation of the roughly $1 trillion law.
The legislation will deliver $550 billion of new federal investments in America’s infrastructure over five years, including money for roads, bridges, mass transit, rail, airports, ports and waterways.
The package also includes a $65 billion investment in improving the nation’s broadband infrastructure and invests tens of billions of dollars in improving the electric grid and water systems. Another $7.5 billion would go to building a nationwide netw ork of plug-in electric vehicle chargers.
The White House is now looking to get the second part of Biden’s economic agenda, which is an even larger spending package, passed through Congress.
The Democrat-led House has passed the $1.9 trillion budget reconciliation package, which includes funding for a universal pre-K program, expanded child care, beefed-up subsidies on the Affordable Care Act exchanges through 2025 and significant investments to combat the climate crisis. But the legislation’s path in the Senate — a chamber Democrats control by the most narrow of margins — remains uncertain and more revisions to the bill are expected.
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CNN’s Maegan Vazquez contributed to this report.
