Contact: Rep. Don Vruwink, 608-266-3790 Electricity lines spread across rural Wisconsin between 1930 and 1940 and most farms were electrified by the early 1950s. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Congress enabled this modernization by establishing the Rural Electrification Administration in 1935. The REA incentivized private utilities, cooperatives, and local governments to provide electricity to rural customers. I think today everyone would agree these investments were necessary to keep our rural communities vibrant and on par with our cities. Today’s challenge in rural America is to extend high-speed Internet, also known as broadband, to every household, farm, and business. Today