By Gregg Hoffmann
For WisPolitics
WESTBY – President Joe Biden traveled to this western Wisconsin community of 2,370 on Thursday to tout new investments in electrification and expanded high-speed internet.
“All these investments mean family farms can stay in the family,” Biden said as he announced $7.3 billion in investments for 16 cooperatives that will provide electricity for millions of families in rural areas across 23 states.
The goal is to lower the cost of badly needed connections in hard-to-reach areas. Funding for the project comes from the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law in August 2022 after it 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, which called the effort the largest investment in rural electrification since the New Deal in the 1930s.
Biden also lauded the 2021 infrastructure law, which was approved with some support from congressional Republicans and which he said had provided 72,000 additional Wisconsin homes and small businesses with high-speed internet.
“Just like we’re making the most significant investment in rural electrification since FDR, we’re also making the most significant investment ever in affordable, high-speed internet because affordable high-speed internet is just as essential today as electricity was a century ago,” Biden said, referring to New Deal architect and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
“All of these investments mean family farms can stay in the family, rural entrepreneurs can build their dreams, your children and grandchildren won’t have to leave home to make a living. That’s stopping now because we’re spreading opportunities to benefit everyone,” he added.
The stop was Biden’s sixth trip to Wisconsin of 2024, but his first since he announced July 21 that he was dropping his reelection bid. He was last in the area in 2021, when he touted a $973 billion infrastructure package that was working its way through Congress.
State GOP Chair Brian Schimming in a statement knocked the president’s return to Wisconsin as “the comeback tour that no one wanted.” He used Biden’s visit to slam the administration for “runaway inflation and mayhem at the southern border” while accusing Vice President Kamala Harris of misleading the public about Biden’s decline and inability to serve.
“This visit is not a celebration, but a somber reminder that a vote for Harris and Tim Walz this November is a vote for another four years of Joe Biden,” Schimming said.
Dairyland Power Cooperative estimates that electric rates for members will be 42% lower over 10 years than they would have been without the New ERA funding. “The reality is the savings to our members will be more than $130 million,” said Brent Ridge, president and CEO of Dairyland.
The project will deliver power to about 240,000 homes and reduce carbon emissions by 70%, according to the cooperative. The total investment, offset by the grant, will be around $3 billion. Construction of the solar and wind sites could begin in the next six months, although locations have not been finalized, Ridge said.
See a White House fact sheet on the grants.
View photos from Biden’s visit.
