Biden picks former New Orleans mayor to supervise infrastructure plan

Mitch Landrieu

(Image credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

President Biden has chosen former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu to supervise the work to be done under the more than $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan Biden is expected to sign Monday, the White House said Sunday.

Landrieu helped guide his city's recovery after the devastation from Hurricane Katrina. He took office in 2010, when recovery efforts had stalled five years after the storm. He secured billions in federal funding for roads, schools, parks, and infrastructure, and turned New Orleans "into one of America's great comeback stories," the White House said.

His job now is to coordinate federal agencies' work on roads, ports, bridges, airports, and broadband infrastructure. "I am thankful to the president and honored to be tasked with coordinating the largest infrastructure investment in generations," Landrieu said in a statement. "Our work will require strong partnerships across the government and with state and local leaders, business and labor to create good-paying jobs and rebuild America for the middle class."

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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.