OP-ED: How President Biden is Helping Working People With Tools to Succeed, Protecting Our Freedoms

On March 7, President Biden delivered his 2024 State of the Union address. He spoke of the progress his administration has made in delivering on an economy that works for all of us in Wisconsin, and his unwavering commitment to continue standing up for the rights, freedoms, and prosperity of average working families.

If there’s anything we in the Badger State can take away from this year’s State of the Union, it’s this: under the Biden Administration, more Wisconsinites have healthcare, workers are earning higher wages, more family supporting jobs are available, every day costs for things like child care and energy bills are going down, and we have a President committed to protecting our freedoms and our safety.

Thanks to tangible Biden investments – like the CHIPS Act, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and Inflation Reduction Act – Wisconsinites are building our economy from the bottom up and middle out, lowering costs and raising wages for hardworking families, and cutting taxes for the middle class while making sure the wealthy and big corporations pay what they owe.

Wisconsinites are also better able to negotiate the costs of our prescription medications, so that nobody has to go broke just to stay alive, while pharmaceutical companies get wealthier with the help of Republican politicians. These same GOP politicians helping to line the pockets of pharmaceutical companies at the expense of Wisconsin families are also trying to make it easier for the wealthiest earners and greedy corporations to dodge paying what they owe in taxes while the rest of us pick up the slack.

But, as President Biden touched on in the State of the Union, his administration is cracking down on tax schemes that let the wealthy get wealthier while average working families get left behind. Under Biden’s leadership, taxes will continue to be cut for middle class Wisconsin families and parents across the state will benefit from an increase in the child tax credit.

President Biden also knows that Wisconsinites, like many others across the nation, overwhelmingly support things like comprehensive access to abortion care and common sense gun safety legislation. That’s why in last week’s speech he doubled down on his commitment to protect and expand access to reproductive healthcare, and keep our communities safe from gun violence.

Overall, the vision unveiled in the president’s 2024 State of the Union is a far cry from the right-wing MAGA agenda of undermining democracy, attacking our rights and freedoms, and handing out tax breaks to the wealthy while leaving the rest of us behind.

The time is now to applaud President Biden for delivering on what matters to average working families, and encourage Wisconsin’s Republican delegation in Washington D.C. to end their MAGA partisan antics and work with the Biden Administration and Democratic leaders to deliver for Wisconsin.