Agenda of Biden’s Build Back Better Bill
The same as the American Rescue Plan Act and the Improving Medicare Coverage Act, no one is talking of the detail within the Build Back Better Agenda bill. This makes it very vulnerable to pseudo Senators like Krysten Sinema and Joe Manchin who are holding out for what ever reasons or just for spite.
It is also good for Angry Bear to know its content too. If there are questions, ask away. I will try to answer with what I know.
Build Back Better Bill
Lower Costs
Lower Child Care Costs
For 57 percent of children under six, there are no good choices for child care where they live. Only 44 percent of four-year-olds are served by public preschool programs. Nearly four in five private sector workers have no access to paid family leave. The President’s plan would ensure that no middle-class family pays more than 7 percent of their income for high-quality child care up to age 5—and that working families most in need won’t pay anything—saving the average family $14,800 per year. President Biden will also make universal preschool a reality, partnering with states to offer every parent access to high-quality preschool for 3- and 4- year-olds in the setting of their choice. Fully implementing this investment is projected to benefit five million families and save the average American family $13,000 per year. And the Build Back Better Agenda would institute 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, to help improve the health of new mothers and reduce wage loss.
Lower Higher Education Costs
Education beyond high school is increasingly important to succeed in the 21st century economy, even as it has become unaffordable for too many families. The Build Back Better Agenda would provide two years of free community college—boosting the earnings of low-wage high school graduates by nearly $6,000 per year. President Biden’s plan will also increase the maximum Pell Grant award by almost $1,500, and invest billions in subsidized tuition for low- and middle-income students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges and Universities, and minority-serving institutions. The plan also invests in evidence-based strategies to strengthen completion and retention rates at institutions that serve high numbers of low-income students, particularly community colleges.
Lower Prescription Drug Costs
Americans pay 2-3 times more for their prescription drugs than people in other wealthy countries, and nearly 1 in 4 Americans struggle to afford prescription drugs. President Biden’s plan will lower prescription drug costs for Americans by letting Medicare negotiate drug prices, so consumers are no longer at the whim of pharmaceutical companies.
Lower Health Care Costs
The Build Back Better Agenda would reduce health insurance premiums, saving 9 million people an average of $50 per person per month, and add dental, vision, and hearing coverage to Medicare. By closing the Medicaid gap for low-income Americans, the President’s plan would help 4 million uninsured people gain coverage. President Biden’s agenda would also expand home care for older and disabled Americans, while improving the jobs and the pay of the home care workers who care for them.
Lower Housing Costs
Driven by the largest shortfall of new housing units in 50 years, rents and housing prices continue to increase—with some 10.5 million renters paying more than half their incomes in rent. The Build Back Better Agenda will use tax credits and government financing to bolster affordable and resilient housing, supporting the construction or rehabilitation of more than two million homes.
Cut Taxes
Tax Cuts for Families with Children
One third of all adults with children struggle to pay their usual expenses. The American Rescue Plan increased the Child Tax Credit from $2,000 per child to $3,000 per child for children six and over and $3,600 for children under six. The Build Back Better Agenda will extend the Child Tax Credit expansion in the American Rescue Plan, providing nearly 40 million households. This tax cut is the single largest contributor of the plan cutting child poverty nearly in half.
Tax Cuts for Workers Without Children
The President’s agenda extends the American Rescue Plan’s increase to the Earned-Income Tax Credit from $543 to $1,502. This will benefit roughly 17 million low-wage workers, including cashiers, cooks, delivery drivers, food preparation workers, and child care providers.
Create Jobs
Workforce Training
The U.S. has chronically underinvested in workforce development, and millions of jobs have been going unfilled in growing sectors such as construction and health care. Through high-quality career and technical education pathways and Registered Apprenticeships, President Biden’s Build Back Better Agenda will invest in training programs that will prepare millions of American workers for high-quality jobs in growing sectors.
Clean Energy Jobs
When President Biden thinks about climate change, he thinks jobs. To position the U.S. to tackle the climate crisis and advance environmental justice, the President’s plan would create good-paying, union jobs, establish an energy efficiency and clean energy standard, expand and extend clean energy and electric vehicle tax credits, and enlist a new Civilian Climate Corps.
Investments in Teachers and Schools
Even before the pandemic, our schools faced an estimated teacher shortage of 100,000, undermining the education of our children and students of color in particular. President Biden’s Build Back Better Agenda will address teacher shortages and improve teacher preparation, including through teacher residencies and Grow Your Own programs that produce better outcomes and develop more teachers of color. It would expand free school meals to an additional 9.3 million children during the school year and help families purchase food during the summer. And the President’s plan also invests in upgrading school infrastructure, so that we have cutting-edge, energy-efficient, resilient school buildings with technology and labs that will prepare students for the jobs of the future.
Great write up. The substance is monumental, the messaging terrible.
Michael:
This is nothing special in content by me and is a C&P. However, so few know what is in this bill. It is important to get some detail out in public so they do know, begin to ask questions, and know whether Manchin and Sinema are full of crap. I am hoping they will explore more of the detail.
Don’t be fooled by this writeup! $2 trillion cost and most goes to Democrats. Much for Democrat getting elected.
Nancy:
Oh goody! And you and Republicans get none? Sounds good to me.
Without ‘Clean Energy’ to show a serious intent to reduce Global Warming, who cares?
i tend to agree with Greta’s take on that…
for what is in this bill, we’d probably be better off with just the social issues run outlined above and leaving all the energy and climate provisions out altogether…and i’ve already spoken to the Exxon infrastructure bill several times here, suffice to say it would be best for the environment if it were to fail altogether….
Or maybe we really need to move away from fossil fuels
as fast as possible, wind farms up and down the US coasts,
filling up the Great Plains, solar-panel farms all over the Sun Belt.
Avoid extra labor costs by using robot riggers instead of expensive
union labor, which is the core of what’s wrong with the Biden plan.
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
FWIW, there is speculation (*) that Sinema could ditch the Dems, but not
to join the GOP. Rather to become yet another independent caucusing
with Dems. Seems rather farfetched, but of course that way, the
Dem majority in the Senate is preserved. Otherwise it is simply
wishful thinking, as the Dems would clearly like to rid of her.
* – In a Boston Globe op-ed, since taken down, it seems.
Not taken down, not in the Globe.
Is It Time for Kyrsten Sinema to Leave the Democratic Party?
NY Times – October 15
Fred:
How silent do you think I will be once I take up permanent residence in AZ? Both Stabenow and Durbin know . . .
Do they care? Probably not. I can expose the lies though.
Biden open to shortening length of programs in spending bill
Sen. Bernie Sanders: Let’s stand together to protect working families
(Link does not work so well. Here’s the text…)
In America today, the very rich are becoming richer while millions of working families are struggling to put food on the table or pay their bills. We now have the absurd situation in which two multi-billionaires own more wealth than the bottom 40% of Americans; the top 1% owns more wealth than the bottom 92%; and the gap between rich and poor is wider than at any time in the last 100 years.
The $3.5 trillion Build Back Better bill, supported by President Biden and almost all Democrats in Congress, is an unprecedented effort to finally address the long-neglected crises facing working families and demand that the wealthiest people and largest corporations in the country start paying their fair share of taxes. In fact, this legislation would be paid for by ending loopholes and raising taxes on the 1% and large profitable corporations.
This bill would take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry and lower the cost of prescription drugs in America by having Medicare negotiate prices with drug companies, something the VA already does. It is unacceptable that we continue to pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs — sometimes 10 times more than the people in other countries.
Last year alone, while nearly one out of four Americans could not afford to fill the prescriptions their doctors wrote, six of the largest pharmaceutical companies made nearly $50 billion in profits and the 10 highest-paid executives in the industry made over $500 million in compensation. In order to preserve this corrupt and greedy pricing system, the drug companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to fight our legislation and have hired nearly 1,500 lobbyists, including former leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, to represent their interests. Enough is enough. We must lower prescription drug prices.
This bill would expand Medicare to cover dental care, hearing aids and eye glasses. Today, in the wealthiest nation on earth, many millions of seniors are unable to afford to go to a dentist, or buy the hearing aids and eye glasses they need. In the richest country on earth older Americans should not have teeth rotting in their mouths. That is unacceptable.
The United States, and states like West Virginia and Vermont in particular, are seeing their populations age. The result: more and more older Americans and people with disabilities need home health care. They would much prefer to be around their loved ones at home rather than be forced into expensive nursing homes. This bill greatly expands home health care and makes sure that these jobs are adequately paid. …
The Build Back Better plan is not only vitally important for seniors, but it is enormously important for working families and their children. As a result of the $300 direct payments to working class parents which began in the American Rescue Plan, we have cut childhood poverty in our country by half. It would be unconscionable to see those payments end, which is exactly what will happen if we do not pass this bill.
This legislation also ends the dysfunction of our childcare system which forces millions of working families to spend 20% to 30% of their limited incomes on childcare and keeps over a million women out of the workforce. Under Build Back Better no family would pay more than 7% of their income for child care, and pre-K education for 3- and 4-year-olds would be universal and free. This is a huge step forward for working parents and their kids.
This legislation would make community college tuition free and enable our young people to acquire the skills they need to get good paying jobs and meaningful careers.
This legislation will end the embarrassment of the United States being the only major country on earth not to guarantee paid family and medical leave.
This legislation will make a massive investment in low-income and affordable housing so that we no longer have 600,000 homeless Americans and millions more who spend half their incomes or more on housing.
And then there is the existential threat of climate change. With the planet becoming warmer and warmer, with unprecedented forest fires, drought, floods and extreme weather disturbances, and when scientists tell us that we only have a few years to avoid irreparable damage to our country and planet, this legislation begins the process of cutting carbon emissions and transforming our energy systems away from fossil fuel and into energy efficiency and sustainable energy.
And when we do all of these things, and more, we create millions of good paying jobs and offer a brighter future for our young people.
This reconciliation bill is being opposed by every Republican in Congress as well as the drug companies, the insurance companies, the fossil fuel industry and the billionaire class. They want to maintain the status quo in which the very rich get richer while ordinary Americans continue to struggle to make ends meet.
I believe that now is the time, finally, for Congress to stand up for working families and have the courage to take on the big money interests and wealthy campaign contributors who have so much power over the economic and political life of our country.
Poll after poll shows overwhelming support for this legislation. Yet, the political problem we face is that in a 50-50 Senate we need every Democratic senator to vote “yes.” We now have only 48. Two Democratic senators remain in opposition, including Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.
This is a pivotal moment in modern American history. We now have a historic opportunity to support the working families of West Virginia, Vermont and the entire country and create policy which works for all, not just the few.