President Joe Biden is returning to southwest Wisconsin to make good on his promise to provide new investments in rural electrification and other infrastructure improvements, the Associated Press reports.
Biden will be in Westby today 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 needed internet connections in hard-to-reach areas.
Funding for the project comes from the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act, passed in Congress along party lines and signed into law in August 2022. 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.
