President Joe Biden on Friday declared to the people of Baltimore that “I’m here to say your nation has your back” as he stood in front of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge and promised federal support to rebuild the critical East Coast crossing.

Visiting 10 days after a shipping vessel lost power and slammed into the bridge pylon, bringing it down, Biden expressed condolences for the six construction workers who lost their lives.

“I’ve been there,” he said to the families of those who perished. “It’s really like having a black hole in your chest. Like you’re being sucked in, unable to breathe. The anger, the depth of loss is so profound.”

After getting an aerial tour of the bridge, Biden said that the federal government would continue to support those affected by the economic crisis caused by the bridge’s destruction.

“We will support Maryland and Baltimore every step of the way, to help you rebuild and maintain all the business and commerce that’s here now,” he said. “I fully intend, I fully intend, as the governor knows, that the federal government will cover the cost of building this entire bridge. All of it. All of it.”

Biden again called on Congress to work with him to approve the federal financing to cover the costs.

During his visit to the wreckage of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, Biden received briefings on the response efforts and planned to meet with the families of construction workers who were plunged into the Patapsco River along with the structure.

Biden saw a more-than-mile-long tangle of concrete and steel that has snarled traffic, devastated blue-collar communities and disrupted operations at one of America’s biggest ports, threatening chaos that could ripple across supply chains.

During a briefing on response efforts, Brig. Gen. John Lloyd from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers told the president that one pending task was to remove a large section of the bridge sitting on the ship. It is 5,000 tons and 125 feet high and must be removed so the ship can be moved. Lloyd also described a “mangled mess” below the water. The recovery effort there involves 51 divers and 12 cranes on site.

Friday, Shalanda Young, head of the Office of Management and Budget, sent a letter to congressional leaders overseeing committees on transportation, infrastructure, and public works asking them to authorize a “100% federal cost share for rebuilding the bridge,” similar to a bipartisan measure that Congress approved in 2007 within days of a catastrophic bridge collapse in Minnesota.

Young said that as the administration continued to help with rebuilding the bridge, it also would explore other avenues to recover costs and reduce costs to taxpayers.

Some Republicans have rebuffed Biden’s promise to pay the entire bridge cost.

Since the collapse, the Biden administration has funded the harbor cleanup, unlocked $60 million in emergency funding to help rebuild the bridge, provided low-interest disaster loans to affected businesses and overseen efforts to monitor and manage any supply chain disruptions.

The Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday that engineers aimed to open a deeper channel to ship traffic by the end of April, and to reopen the permanent deep draft navigation channel by the end of May.

The structure, which took five years to build, opened in 1977 and served as a critical transportation link on the East Coast, carrying more than 30,000 vehicles a day as they traveled on Interstate 695. It was named after Francis Scott Key, the Maryland-born author of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”