The new lock has no name.
That will come later. For now, workers in orange vests excavate concrete and dirt from defunct locks built over a century ago in the St. Marys River that divides the United States and Canada. But when they are finished – and 1,000-foot long cargo ships laden with iron ore can rise and fall 20-plus feet in a matter of minutes – there will undoubtedly be a naming ceremony.
Maybe the Biden Lock?
Why We Wrote This
President Joe Biden won a historic surge in federal funding for roads, bridges, and other U.S. infrastructure projects, after decades of neglect. Michigan is a top beneficiary. But there’s little sign it’s providing a political boost here to Democrats.
As the “Project funded by President Joe Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law” poster tied to a nearby fence suggests, the new Soo Lock here in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, is spurred by the 2021 legislation that will be a cornerstone of Mr. Biden’s legacy.
Roughly $1.2 trillion is being allocated to projects across the U.S., including $700 million to the Soo Locks complex. It promises a historic surge of job-creating federal investment for roads, bridges, ports, water, and broadband after what experts say has been an era of chronic underfunding.
But the political payoff for Democrats – in Michigan and other critical swing states – may be close to nothing.
For all their tangible promise to the economy and individual lives, the projects funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) are by nature long-term efforts. The new Soo Lock, for example, should be done within 10 years. Meanwhile, the election is less than two months away. What voters are more focused on is inflation, which many economic experts agree this legislation contributed to but did not cause.
Work has begun at a decommissioned lock, in preparation to build the new lock that is needed for the Soo Locks complex in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.
The campaign politics around some of Democrats’ biggest legislative accomplishments have only gotten more difficult since Mr. Biden dropped out of the presidential race and Vice President Kamala Harris became the party’s presidential nominee. She has tried to cast herself as the “change” candidate, complicating efforts to tout Biden-Harris achievements – including the projects in their infrastructure and inflation reduction acts.
“These two bills would be a landmark achievement for any president, so your instinct is to campaign on it,” says Adie Tomer, a senior fellow at Brookings Metro and an expert on infrastructure policy. “But it runs head first into cold, hard political realities.”
Dry mud covers the bottom of a decommissioned lock in the Soo Locks complex.
Infrastructure has bipartisan support – to a degree
Infrastructure may be chronically underfunded by Washington, but it is one issue on which Americans on both sides of the political aisle find agreement. At least 70% of Republicans and more than 80% of Democrats favor funding for roads, bridges, and water pipes. (“Who likes lead in their water?” Mr. Tomer asks rhetorically.) When asked about the “Biden infrastructure plan” in a separate poll, however, fewer than 20% of Republicans approve.
With partisanship infiltrating all aspects of U.S. politics, infrastructure isn’t the unifying issue in Congress that it was almost a century ago. Mr. Biden and congressional Democrats, in wanting to signal they can work across the aisle, call the IIJA the “Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.” But while some Republican lawmakers supported it, a majority in both chambers voted against it.
Some of the Republicans who voted no have attended ribbon-cutting ceremonies for these projects, touting the benefits to their districts despite their previous opposition, to the ire of Democrats. And even when completed, these projects haven’t been universally embraced by all constituents.
In northern Michigan, Pellston Public Schools Superintendent Stephen Seelye heard that districts like his – rural, with high poverty and large Native American populations – prequalified for an electric school bus grant through the IIJA. He put in a request and was approved for four new buses late last year worth $375,000 each.
Pellston Public Schools Superintendent Stephen Seeyle stands next to the new electric buses the district bought with money from the Biden infrastructure act, on June 11, 2024. A rural community in northern Michigan, Pellston received over $1.5 million to replace its buses, reducing annual maintenance and fuel costs.
Pellston is one of almost 1,300 school districts in the U.S. that have been awarded almost 9,000 school buses through the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean School Bus Program, a $5 billion slice of the IIJA.
Given that transportation costs per student are higher in rural districts, Pellston expects to save $50,000 a year as the electric buses reduce fuel and maintenance costs. For a district where 22% of children under 18 years old live in poverty, that kind of money is “huge,” says Mr. Seelye, as he leans against the hood of one of his new yellow buses, glittering in the afternoon sun. “That’s close to the cost of a teacher.”
But when the news was announced on Facebook, “the negative comments were crazy,” he says. “We’re in a very Republican area, so there was a lot of heat for putting these buses on the road.” He attributes the pushback from his community, where former President Donald Trump won by double digits, to the fact that “electric” has become a liberal buzzword, and that the source of funding is “a Biden thing.”
The criticism has died down now that Pellston has seen the buses in action, says Mr. Seelye. Drivers rave that their new vehicles handle the wintry roads far better, and they appreciate how the buses can be programmed to preheat ahead of time.
The district just got funds for its fifth and final bus to be traded for an electric one as well.
Without the federal funding, it would have taken a decade to replace the fleet. (They were replacing one traditional school bus, each costing about one-third as much as an ele
