On paper, the Biden Administration said the president was coming to Milwaukee on Tuesday to talk about the Inflation Reduction Act. It took about 15 minutes, however, for President Biden to shift the focus to Bidenomics.
“The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal started calling my plan, and not initially as a compliment, Bidenomics,” the president told the crowd at the Ingeteam, a clean energy manufacturer that makes wind turbine generators and is the kind of green energy job creator the president wanted to praise.
“Like the 12 solar energy projects Alliant Energy is building across Wisconsin,” Biden noted. “Paris Solar has broken ground on the state’s first, large-scale battery and storage project in Kenosha County.”
The president also mentioned Siemens will open in Kenosha County, with a plant that will make solar inverters.
Biden’s visit is his first to Wisconsin during the 2024 election cycle.
He won the state by about 20,000 votes in 2020.
He didn’t talk about the race, or the group of Republicans who will be in Milwaukee next week for their presidential debate.
Instead, Biden talked mainly about jobs during his nearly hour-long speech.
“I came to Milwaukee to talk about what we’re doing to bring manufacturing back home,” the president said to a round of applause. “It’s about our progress. Building an economy from the middle out, and the bottom up. Not the top down.”
President Biden’s visit did not go without opposition.
The group Americans for Prosperity in Wisconsin was outside the president’s speech, offering its own version of Bidenomics.
“From higher gas prices to more expensive groceries, we can’t afford it anymore,” the group said.
Wisconsin is one of the key battleground states in 2024. Politicos in the state have said that whoever wins Wisconsin could very well win the White House.