The Biden/Harris Administration Unveils the American Families Plan

Photo from Slow Boring 

Ahead of President Biden's first address before a Joint Session of Congress as President, the Administration unveiled the second part of its Build Back Better Program: The American Families Plan. The American Jobs Plan was released last month.

In a statement released by the White House, the Administration said:

"The American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan are once-in-a-generation investments in our nation’s future. The American Jobs Plan will create millions of good jobs, rebuild our country’s physical infrastructure and workforce, and spark innovation and manufacturing here at home. The American Families Plan is an investment in our children and our families—helping families cover the basic expenses that so many struggles with now, lowering health insurance premiums, and continuing the American Rescue Plan’s historic reductions in child poverty. Together, these plans reinvest in the future of the American economy and American workers and will help us out-compete China and other countries around the world."

What is in the Plan?

The American Families Plan provides for:

• Free Quality Pre-school for three and four-year-olds.
• Two years of free community college.
• Making college more affordable for low and middle-income families through increased Pell Grant allotments.
• Invests in teachers and their training.
• Child Care Assistance so families spend no more than seven percent of their income on child care.
• A national comprehensive paid family and medical leave program.
• Nutrition assistance such as expanding access to healthy meals for children in school and summer meal programs.
• Extending tax cuts and credits that were included in the American Rescue Plan including the Child Tax Credit, the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit, and the expanded health insurance tax credits that have reduced health insurance rates. Paid

The Biden/Harris Administration contends that investing in these human-centered programs will:

"...yield significant economic returns – boosting productivity and economic growth, producing a larger, more productive, and healthier workforce on a sustained basis, and generating savings to states and the federal government. Evidence shows that a dollar invested in high-quality early childhood programs for low-income children will result in up to $7.30 in benefits, including increased wages, improved health, and reduced crime. Parental paid leave has been shown to keep mothers in the workforce, increasing labor force participation and boosting economic growth. And, sustained tax credits for families with children have been found to yield a lifetime of benefits, ranging from higher educational attainment to higher lifetime earnings."

How to Pay for the American Families Plan.

The Biden/Harris Administration has proposed paying for the American Families Plan by:

• Reversing the 2017 Trump Tax Cuts on those making $400,000 or higher at 39.6 percent.
• Boosting the I.R.S. enforcement budget to investigate upper-income earners.
• Elimination of tax loopholes like reforming the estate tax for those values at one million for individuals and $2.5 for married couples.
• Increasing the Capital Gains Tax.

The White House, in their statement, wrote:

"President Biden’s plan uses the resulting revenue to rebuild the middle class, investing in education and boosting wages. It will also give tax relief to middle-class families, dramatically reducing child poverty and cutting the cost of child care in half for many families. The result of the President’s individual tax reforms will be a tax code with fewer loopholes for the wealthy and more opportunity for low- and middle-income Americans."

"Altogether, these tax reforms focused on the highest-income Americans would raise about $1.5 trillion across the decade. In combination with the American Jobs Plan, which produces long-term deficit reduction through corporate tax reform, all of the investments would be fully paid for over the next 15 years."

The American Jobs and Families Plans in the Biden/Harris Build Back Better Plan are ambitious and bold.

They will truly move the country and the American People forward.

Now the hard part of negotiating with Congress will begin.