White House Launches 'Bidenomics' Push With $40 Billion In High-Speed Internet Funding

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are set to announce $40 billion in funding for high-speed internet around the country on Monday.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are set to unveil $40 billion in funding for high-speed internet projects across the country on Monday, the start of a White House push to convince voters “Bidenomics” is working.

Biden is set to deliver a major address on his economic vision on Wednesday in Chicago, though two of his top White House advisers began the pitch with a memo to reporters released Monday morning. They’re aiming to contrast Biden’s focus on the middle class with four decades of trickle-down economics inspired by former President Ronald Reagan, and convince voters to give Biden some credit for an improving economy.

The sky-high inflation of the first two years of Biden’s presidency, which has slowed over the past year, has overshadowed his other economic accomplishments. He typically receives poor marks for his handling of the economy in public polling.

“Bidenomics is rooted in the simple idea that we need to grow the economy from the middle out and the bottom up — not the top down,” White House senior advisers Anita Dunn and Mike Donilon wrote in the memo. “Implementing that economic vision and plan — and decisively turning the page on the era of trickle-down economics — has been the defining project of the Biden presidency.”

Much of the memo and an accompanying slide deck is built around comparing the post-pandemic economic recovery of the U.S. with the recovery in other nations, highlighting the United States’ higher rate of economic growth than other countries whose economies have actually shrunk, including the U.K. and Germany.

“Better pay and other Biden Administration policies have helped put middle class Americans into stronger financial position than they were in pre-pandemic — despite the global challenge of inflation,” Dunn and Donilon write in the memo. “Americans have higher net worths and higher real disposable incomes today than they did before the pandemic.”

The $40 billion in funding Biden is set to roll out will go to all 50 states, different U.S. territories and the District of Columbia. The money, which comes from the bipartisan infrastructure law Congress passed in 2021, will go to building broadband infrastructure in places that lack it and improving it in places that do.

“Just like Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered electricity to every home in America through his Rural Electrification Act, the announcement is part of President Biden’s broader effort to deliver investments, jobs, and opportunities directly to working and middle-class families across the country,” Donilon and Dunn said.