By DARLENE SUPERVILLE Associated Press
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CHRISTIANSTED, U.S. Virgin Islands — President Joe Biden and top administration officials will open a new year of divided government by fanning out across the country to talk about how the economy is benefiting from his work with Democrats and Republicans.

As part of the pitch, Biden and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell will make a rare joint appearance in McConnell’s home state of Kentucky on Wednesday to highlight nearly $1 trillion in infrastructure spending that lawmakers approved on a bipartisan basis in 2021.

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The Democratic president will also be joined by a bipartisan group of elected officials when he visits the Kentucky side of the Cincinnati area, including Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky and Republican Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, the White House said.

Biden’s bipartisanship blitz was announced two days before Republicans retake control of the House from Democrats on Tuesday following GOP gains in the November elections. The shift ends unified political control of Congress by Democrats and complicates Biden’s future legislative agenda. Democrats will remain in charge in the Senate.

Before he departed Washington for vacation at the end of last year, Biden appealed for less partisanship, saying he hoped everyone will see each other “not as Democrats or Republicans, not as members of ‘Team Red’ or ‘Team Blue,’ but as who we really are, fellow Americans.”

The president’s trip appeared tied to a recent announcement by Kentucky and Ohio that they will receive more than $1.63 billion in federal grants to help build a new Ohio River bridge near Cincinnati and improve the existing overloaded span there, a heavily used freight route linking the Midwest and the South.

Congestion at the Brent Spence Bridge on Interstates 75 and 71 has for years been a frustrating bottleneck on a key shipping corridor and a symbol of the nation’s growing infrastructure needs.

Officials say the bridge was built in the 1960s to carry around 80,000 vehicles a day but has seen double that traffic load on its narrow lanes, leading the Federal Highway Administration to declare it functionally obsolete.

The planned project covers about 8 miles (12 kilometers) and includes improvements to the bridge and some connecting roads and construction of a companion span nearby.

Both states coordinated to request funding under the nearly $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal signed in 2021 by Biden, who had highlighted the project as the legislation moved through Congress.

McConnell said the companion bridge “will be one of the bill’s crowning accomplishments.”

DeWine said both states have been discussing the project for almost two decades “and now, we can finally move beyond the talk and get to work.”