Remarks at the Groundbreaking for the I-70 Floyd Hill Project

Remarks at the Groundbreaking for the I-70 Floyd Hill Project — As Delivered

I want to thank Clear Creek County Commissioner Randy [Wheelock]. Thank you for being here, and your colleagues and the county commissioners for your vision and your leadership.

This has not been the easiest few years in the world, but it’s been worth it.

Governor, thank you for your leadership. It really is true. John and I brought Secretary Buttigieg out here with Congressman Neguse to see Floyd Hill and to see the needs on the West Slope for himself. Because CDOT is so well prepared shows the extraordinary leadership that is your great leadership.

You know, we’ve been able to see projects funded on the Western Slope of Colorado — Grand Junction, Glenwood Spring, here today at I-70 and in Alamosa, in Pueblo, because Colorado really is ready.

We know how to build stuff. We know how to get stuff done. And it makes the world easy. Passing the Bipartisan infrastructure bill was not easy.

And it’s something Senator John Hickenlooper was very involved in. I can’t drive on I-70 without thinking about the people that go through these mountains of Colorado — every single time I’m at a big event visiting the people, the imagination of the people that built these bridges and built these tunnels.

What I also think about is how much was cared about the next generations and the generation coming after them.

They were thinking about 100 years into the future. And that’s what this is about today.

This is the biggest grant that CDOT has ever gotten from the federal government in our history. And it is about our future 100 years from now.

You know, after a few decades of Washington priorities when we were cutting taxes for the wealthiest people and countries borrowing money to do that, fighting two wars in the Middle East that lasted 20 years… in America that Colorado is benefiting from that all over the state.

So I couldn’t be more pleased to be here today.

I want to thank the I-70 coalition as well for hanging in there and for getting us to this place.

And with that, let me introduce my colleague John Hickenlooper from the US Senate. He was intensely involved in the bipartisan negotiations that led to the biggest investment that we’ve made in American infrastructure since Dwight Eisenhower was our president.