Biden promotes administration’s rural electrification funding in Wisconsin

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden returns to southwest Wisconsin on Thursday to make good on his promise to provide new investments in rural electrification and other infrastructure improvements.

Biden will be in Westby to announce $7.3 billion in investments for 16 cooperatives that will provide electricity for rural areas across 23 states. The intent is to bring down the cost of badly needed internet connections in hard-to-reach areas.

Funding for the project comes from the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law in August 2022 and passed in Congress along party lines. The law invests roughly $13 billion in rural electrification across multiple programs and will create 4,500 permanent jobs and 16,000 construction jobs, according to the White House.

The administration calls it the largest investment in rural electrification since the New Deal in the 1930s.

Democrats consider Wisconsin to be one of the must-win states in November’s presidential election between Republican former President Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris. Biden won the state in 2020 by about 20,000 votes, flipping Wisconsin to the Democratic column after Trump narrowly won it in 2016.

And Thursday’s trip will be a return to a state that Biden visited early in his presidency. Then, he made a promise to provide, among other infrastructure improvements, better internet to rural areas.

“It isn’t a luxury; it’s now a necessity, like water and electricity,” Biden said at the La Crosse Municipal Transit Utility in June 2021. “And this deal would provide for it for everyone, while bringing down the cost of internet service across the board.”

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Natalie Quillian told reporters Wednesday previewing Biden’s trip that, “when he returns tomorrow, he will have delivered on so many of those promises.”