The Biden administration on Thursday announced it is awarding nearly $1 billion in grants to update terminals at 114 airports.

The new funding announcement marks the launch of the White House’s fourth Investing in America tour, where top administration officials will set off around the country once again to tout the impact of President Joe Biden’s legislative record. 

The $970 million being awarded will go to airport projects across 44 states and three territories. The Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida, for instance, will receive $50 million. In California, San Francisco International Airport and Los Angeles International airport will each receive $31 million. 

In a call to preview the announcement, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Natalie Quillian said the funds will be used to create “new baggage systems, larger security checkpoints and expanded gate capacity.” 

“All of these investments are going to help us meet the growing demand for air travel that we’re seeing across the country,” Quillian added. 

“These are projects that are going to save Americans time and money,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told reporters on the call. 

The funding comes from the Airport Terminal Grant Program, which Buttigieg noted was one of the programs created by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law signed by Biden in 2021. 

“And one thing that's distinctive about it is it includes a lot of what you might call ‘front of house’ improvements, ones that you see and feel when you get ready to fly as well as the more traditional under-the-hood improvements to things like towers and utilities at our airports that you may not see but will certainly benefit from,” Buttigieg told reporters on the call. 

The secretary gave examples of upgrades taking place at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, where they are making concourses wider and bathrooms bigger, and Appleton International Airport in Wisconsin, where they are adding four gates with passenger boarding bridges. 

The goal? “Making it easier for passengers to get to and through America’s airports,” he said. 

It comes as the administration is deploying top officials around the country for its fourth Investing in America tour as Biden looks to convince the American public he deserves credit for the state of the economy. 

Over the coming weeks top officials, including Cabinet secretaries, first lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and the president himself, will spread out around the country to highlight Biden’s economic agenda. 

“It's not a surprise that we've now had two years in a row, under 4% unemployment, because these investments are coming to communities across the country and providing opportunities for folks to punch their ticket to the middle class,” Director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs Tom Perez said in an interview with Spectrum News. “So that's what we'll be doing across the country,” 

“We're going to Indian country to talk about how our investments in tribal communities are quite frankly unprecedented,” he said. 

Perez noted he himself will be heading to Arizona to talk about clean energy projects spurred by Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. 

“Because if you want to modernize your place of worship and put solar panels on it, the Inflation Reduction Act can be your friend,” Perez said. “If you want to electrify your fleet of school buses, the Inflation Reduction Act can be your friend.” 

But even as Perez said the administration believes continuing to “meet people where they are” – in this case, through multiple tours – will pay off, polls have yet to show it. Despite rising consumer sentiment and signs people are feeling better about the economy, Biden’s economic approval rating on the issue came in at 35%, according to a new poll conducted in January by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. 

“By making house calls and connecting the dots for them, showing them that ‘you know, that child care tax credit you got a couple of years ago? That didn't come out of thin air, that was Joe Biden,” Perez said. “Showing them that you remember a year ago? Your grandma was paying 1,000 bucks a month for insulin – now she's paying 35 bucks a month. That was Joe Biden.”