Biden Visits La Crosse to Tout Progress on Infrastructure by Ben Wikler, DPW Chair, & Ron Malzer, LCDP Board Member
“This will be a generational investment to modernize our infrastructure,” President Joe Biden declared, while visiting La Crosse on Tuesday June 29. He was describing the progress he has made in moving Congress toward passage of landmark infrastructure-building legislation.
President Biden had announced that the White House and a bipartisan coalition of U.S. Senators have reached an agreement on an infrastructure bill. Biden and Democrats in Congress had advocated effectively for working families across the country and in the state of Wisconsin. Biden also used his La Crosse visit to drive home the need for passing his “American Jobs Plan.”
President Biden came into office with the promise of working across the aisle to better the lives of American families—and he’s delivering on that promise. This agreement would represent the largest investment in American infrastructure in a century, the largest investment in public transit in American history, and the largest investment in clean drinking water and waste management in American history. And President Biden is seeking to pair it with another bill that, among many other key provisions, would make the child tax credit permanent.
Every neighborhood in Wisconsin will see the benefits of this plan, from expanded broadband access to investments in the physical infrastructure that keeps our cities and towns moving. We need federal support to build on Gov. Evers’s record investments in broadband and infrastructure and the nearly half a billion dollars in transportation funding in the governor’s first budget. President Biden, Gov. Evers, and Wisconsin Democrats in Congress continue to prove how good leadership can better our country and state.
Biden paid a surprise visit to the Pearl Ice Cream Shop, where he bought cones for Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Rep. Ron Kind, before ordering himself a two-scoop with strawberry ice cream and cookies-and-cream. Customers at The Pearl are now ordering that combo by asking for “The Joe Biden”, the Pearl’s owners report.
La Crosse’s Mayor Mitch Reynolds called the Biden visit “fantastic and really truly an honor.”
Biden left La Crosse with a message that goes beyond infrastructure, one that calls us to join him in working to heal America from the damage done by the Republican Party in the four years preceding Biden’s inauguration:
“When I was sworn in five months ago, I pledged to put my whole soul into bringing America together. I said I was running for three reasons, the last one of which I said is unite America,” he said. “I admit it’s difficult, and I think some of my friends in the press thought it was impossible. I still don’t think it is but — because I believe that there’s nothing we cannot do.”