There will be no new bridge over the Mississippi River named after President Trump. A bill to do so that sailed through the House died in the Senate. The author, Monroe Representative Michael Echols, says the purpose behind his bill was to coax the Trump administration to give the state a hefty portion of the $3 billion it would cost to build the additional bridge.
“Designating that Mississippi River bridge as the President Donald Trump Expressway would have opened a broad conversation with Washington to be able to pull funding down to get this done faster,” Echols said.
Echols says this was his way of kick-starting the project, which has been talked about for 30 years.
“This was going to be one of those steps to get over the finish line, but our senators had no desire to help with that effort,” Echols said.
Echols says, in fact, the Senate told him it had no desire to take up any road or bridge-naming bills this year. He says naming the bridge after Trump was not absolute; it was contingent on him securing federal funding during his term.
“If we didn’t get the funding for it, the bridge wouldn’t have been named in that manner; or at least a substantial amount of the funding. My goal in all of this was to get the dollars to Louisiana, Echols explained.