President Biden brings message of greater power investment in rural America to Vernon County

Five months after becoming president in 2021, Joe Biden traveled to La Crosse to talk about the need for electricity and good internet service in parts of rural America.

This week, with four months left before his term ends, Biden returned to the Coulee Region to announce billions of dollars in new spending on electric cooperatives. The president only spent about three hours in the area on Thursday, landing in La Crosse and then traveling to an electric co-op office in Westby to announce the electricity initiative.

Sixteen cooperatives are expected to share the $7 billion being allocated by Biden, through the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law in 2022. According to one interest group, that includes the Dairyland Power Cooperative of western Wisconsin, which plans to increase its use of wind and solar energy.

The law invests roughly $13 billion in rural electrification across multiple programs and will create more than 4000 permanent jobs.

During his speech at the Vernon Electric Cooperative, Biden also said that an infrastructure law signed in 2021 had provided 72,000 homes and businesses in Wisconsin with high-speed internet. His goal is to lower the cost of electricity in hard-to reach regions of the country. Biden says the investments “mean family farms can stay in the family.”

Biden also referred to a promise he made during a visit to the La Crosse MTU during his first year as president in 2021. At that time, Biden said better internet service is not a “luxury,” but “a necessity, like water and electricity.”

The president’s plane, Air Force One, landed at the La Crosse Airport before the Westby visit, and Biden’s party returned to La Crosse for departure by helicopter.

President Biden’s trip to Westby came exactly a week after former President Donald Trump took part in a town hall meeting at the La Crosse Center. Biden announced in July that he was ending his campaign for a second term as president, and Vice President Kamala Harris was named the Democratic Party nominee.