It is Time to Pass Both the Infrastructure and Build Back Better Plans

 Is it wrong that the recent version of the Build Back Better Plan does not have:

• Any version of Paid Family and Medical Leave?
• Two Years of Free Community College?
• Expanded Medicare Coverage for Dental and Vision Care?
• A permanent extension of the Child Tax Credit for everyone?
• A more stringent plan to reduce carbon emissions and put the final nail in the coffin of coal and fossil fuels?

Yes on all accounts.

Does that mean Democrats should reject the current version of the Build Back Better Plan?

Hell no!

Why?

Because of the transformational and historical components remaining in the legislation. According to the White House Press Office, these include:

• "Universal Pre School for all three and four-year-old children.
• Affordable and high-quality child care.
• Affordable and high-quality home care.
• Expanded child tax credit for one more year with refundability permanent. 
• $320 billion in Clean Energy Tax Credits. 
• $105 billion in Sustainability-Resilence investments.
• $110 billion for clean energy manufacturing and supply incentives.
• $20 billion for clean energy procurement.
• Medicare provides hearing services. 
• Extending the Expanded Affordable Care Tax Credits through 2025 and making it available to people in states that can not get Medicaid. 
• $150 billion in housing assistance. 
• Increasing Pell Grants, provide increased funding to Black, Latino, and other minority institutions, and monies for workplace development including those in community colleges and apprenticeship programs. 
• Extend the expanded Earned Income Tax Credit. 
• Other targeted investments include maternal health, community violence initiatives, Native communities, disadvantaged farmers, nutrition, pandemic preparedness, supply chain resilience, and other areas."

This legislation would be paid for partially by:

• a fifteen percent minimum tax on corporations.
• a one percent surcharge on stock buybacks.
• a new surtax on multimillionaires and billionaires.
• investing in Internal Revenue Enforcement.

Speaking to the nation after addressing House Democrats in a closed-door meeting, President Joe Biden said:

"...I think we have an historic, I know we have an historic economic framework. It’s a framework that will create millions of jobs, grow the economy, invest in our nation and our people. Turn the climate crisis into an opportunity and put us in a path not only to compete but to win the economic competition for the 21st century against China and every other major country in the world...No one got everything they wanted, including me. But that’s what compromise is. That’s consensus. And that’s what I ran on. I’ve long said compromise and consensus are the only way to get big things done in a democracy. Important things done for the country. I know it’s hard. I know how deeply people feel about the things that they fight for. But this framework includes historic investments in our nation and in our people. Any single element of this framework would fundamentally be viewed as a fundamental change in America. Taken together, they’re truly consequential..."

"...We need to build America from the bottom up and the middle out, not from the top down with the trickle-down economics that’s always failed us. I can’t think of a single time when the middle class has done well that the wealthy haven’t done very well. I can think of many times, including now, when the wealthy, the super-wealthy do very well, and the middle class don’t do well..."

"...For much too long, working people of this nation in the middle class of this country have been dealt out of the American deal. It’s time to deal them back in. I ran for president saying it was time to reduce the burden on the middle class. To rebuild the backbone of this nation, working people, and the middle class. I couldn’t have been any clearer from the very moment I announced my candidacy. That’s why I wrote these bills in the first place and took them to the people. I campaigned on them, and the American people spoke."

It is understandable to be frustrated that the Biden/Harris agenda is at the mercy of one Prima Donna West Virginia Senator (Joe Manchin) who claims he can not explain Paid Family Leave or Medicare expansion for dental and vision to his constituents (total bull fecal matter)and a constituent adverse Arizona one (Kyrsten Sinema) who has a problem raising tax rates on the wealthy and corporations (what is she smoking.)

That said, what is on the legislative table between both the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the current incarnation of the Build Back Better Plan is truly transformational. It will move the country forward, rebuild the nation and take it into the Twenty-First Century, lift people out of poverty, and strengthen and expand the middle class.

The nation's representatives and Senators, instead of recessing for the weekend, should stay in Washington D.C. working on the Build Back Better Plan and voting on both pieces of legislation.

With these two pieces of legislation, Democrats and Progressives can go to the people and say "look what we have done for the nation and the American People. Now, look at the other party. What do they have to offer? Nothing but backwardness and a retreat from Democracy. Vote more Democrats into office and we will finish the Build Back Better Agenda and save Democracy from the Trumpists infesting the former Party of Lincoln."

It really should not be this hard for Democrats to figure out.

As said in the headline of an earlier article, it is time to cut the crap and get a deal done for the American People.