Biden's Budget Proposal: The "American Jobs Plan"
Biden's budget is exactly what we would expect: increased spending and increased government control. The dollar amounts and the wording is directly from their "fact" sheet. Much of the spending describe we've seen in bills introduced this Congressional Session. Particularly notice: 1) how they couch this as a "jobs" budget; 2) Green New Deal throughout; 3) how often the words "increase spending" and "free" occur; 4) that they are pushing gun violence as a public health crisis; and 5) the totally ridiculous summary paragraph at the end that explains how this is "good" for the economy.
"Biden's proposal would increase the country's debt to 117% of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030."
THE AMERICAN JOBS PLAN - This part of the budget is basically a repeat of the infrastructure bill. Their organizational structure is awkward. What do water, electric grid and broadband have in common? They try to sell it as producing jobs (you remember those coal miners who lose their jobs are going to learn how to code, right?).
Fix Highways, Rebuild Bridges, Upgrade Ports, Airports, and Transit Systems.
Modernize 20,000 miles of highways, roads, and main-streets.
Fix 10 most economically significant bridges in the Nation (no definition of how they will decide the economically significant bridges).
Repair the worst 10,000 smaller bridges
Replace thousands of buses and rail cars, repair hundreds of stations, renew airports, modernize Ports of Entry and expand transit and rail into new communities.
Deliver Clean Drinking Water, A Renewed Electric Grid, and High-Speed Broadband to All Americans.
Eliminate all lead pipes and service lines in drinking water systems, improving the health of the Nation's children and communities of color.
Put hundreds of thousands of people to work laying thousands of miles of transmission lines and capping hundreds of thousands of orphan oil and gas wells and abandoned mines.
Bring affordable, reliable, high-speed broadband to every American
Build, Preserve, and Retrofit More Than Two Million Homes and Commercial Buildings, Modernize Our Nation's Schools and Child Care Facilities, and Upgrade Veterans' Hospitals and Federal Buildings.
Create good jobs building, rehabilitating, and retrofitting affordable, accessible, energy efficient, and resilient housing, commercial buildings, schools, community colleges, and child care facilities all over the Nation (At a recent GOP gathering Adam explained the challenges of putting low flow toilets in old buildings. The pressure in existing toilets was necessary to move water. Low flow toilets did not allow sufficient pressure to move the water through the pipes.)
Improve the Nation's Federal facilities, especially those that serve veterans.
Solidify the Infrastructure of Our Care Economy by Creating Jobs and Raising Wages and Benefits for Essential Home Care Workers.
Create new and better jobs for caregiving workers (My 98 year old mom is in an assisted living facility in Concord. I can't help but wonder how "new" and "better" jobs will meet the needs of the folks living there. Notice nothing is said about requiring more training to better meet the needs of those they serve.
Provide home- and community-based care for older people and people with disabilities who would otherwise have to wait years to get services they need.
Revitalize Manufacturing, Secure U.S. Supply Chains, Invest in R&D, and Train Americans for the Jobs of the Future.
Ensure the best, diverse minds in America are put to work creating the innovations of the future while creating hundreds of thousands of quality jobs today. (This is going to be really tough when states like VA and NC are eliminating advanced math classes and Gifted/Talented programs. They want the "best" minds – how's that fit with their "equity" of outcomes agenda?)
Build and make things in every part of America
Train for well-paying, middle-class jobs using evidence-based approaches such as sector-based training and apprenticeship.
THE AMERICAN FAMILIES PLAN - Described as "a historic investment to help families cover the basic expenses that so many struggle with now, lower health insurance premiums, and continue the American Rescue Plan's historic reductions in child poverty." (In 50 years 1964-2014 US taxpayers have spent over $22 Trillion on anti-poverty programs. This does not include Social Security or Medicare)
https://www.heritage.org/poverty-and-inequality/report/the-war-poverty-after-50-years
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/05/no_progress_since_the_war_on_poverty_began_half_a_century_ago.html
Add at Least Four Years of Free Education.
Universal, high-quality preschool to all three- and four- year-olds.
Two years of free community college.
Make college more affordable for low- and middle-income students, including students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), and minority-serving institutions (MSIs) such as Hispanic-serving institutions and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander serving institutions.
Increase the Pell Grant by $1,475, alongside an additional $400 increase in the Budget, for the largest one-time increase in the grant's history.
Improve teacher training and support so that our schools become engines of growth at every level (Don't they mean engines of indoctrination?).
Provide Direct Support to Children and Families.
Provide direct support to families to ensure that low- and middle-income families spend no more than 7% of their income on child care, and that the child care they access is of high-quality.
Create a national comprehensive paid family and medical leave program that will bring the American system in line with competitor nations that offer paid leave programs.
Provide critical nutrition assistance to families who need it most and expand access to healthy meals to our Nation's students – dramatically reducing childhood hunger.
Extend Tax Cuts for Families with Children and American Workers.
Extend key tax cuts in the American Rescue Plan that benefit lower- and middle-income workers and families, including the expansions of the Child Tax Credit, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit.
Strengthening Health Care.
Extend the expanded health insurance tax credits in the American Rescue Plan.
Improve maternal health and reduce maternal mortality.
Support the families of veterans receiving health care services.
Cut prescription drug costs by letting Medicare negotiate prices;
Reduce deductibles for ACA marketplace plans
Improving Medicare benefits
Close the Medicaid coverage gap to help millions of uninsured Americas gain health insurance.
REINVESTING IN THE FOUNDATIONS OF OUR NATION'S STRENGTH Over the past decade, due in large measure to overly restrictive budget caps, the Nation significantly underinvested in crucial public services, benefits, and protections. To truly build back better, our country must also begin to reverse these trends and reinvest in core functions of Government
Makes Historic Investments in High-Poverty Schools.
$36.5 billion investment in Title I schools, a $20 billion increase from the 2021 enacted level.
Launch Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H).
$6.5 billion to launch ARPA-H, which would provide significant increases in direct Federal research and development spending in health. With an initial focus on cancer and other diseases such as diabetes and Alzheimer's, this major investment in Federal research and development would drive transformational innovation in health research and speed application and implementation of health breakthroughs.
Improve Readiness for Future Public Health Crises.
$8.7 billion in discretionary funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—the largest budget authority increase in nearly two decades—to restore capacity at the world's preeminent public health agency and rebuild international capacity to detect, prepare for, and respond to emerging global threats.
Major Investment to Help End the Opioid Epidemic. The Budget includes a historic investment of
$10.7 billion in discretionary funding in the Department of Health and Human Services, an increase of $3.9 billion over the 2021 enacted level, to support research, prevention, treatment, and recovery support services, with targeted investments to support populations with unique needs, including Native Americans, older Americans, and rural populations.
$621 million specific to the Department of Veterans Affair's Opioid Prevention and Treatment programs.
Invests in Tackling the Climate Crisis.
Iincrease of more than $14 billion compared to 2021—across nearly every agency to: restore the critical capacity needed to carry out their core functions and to take a whole-of-government approach to tackling climate change;
Secure environmental justice for communities that have been left behind through the largest direct investment in environmental justice in history;
Help developing countries reduce emissions and adapt to climate change.
Combat the Gun Violence Public Health Epidemic. The Budget includes
$2.1 billion, an increase of $232 million above the 2021 enacted level, for DOJ to address the gun violence public health crisis plaguing communities across the Nation. (Recognize that if they indeed call gun violence a "public healtIh crisis" it will give them the verbiage necessary to go after guns by executive order.)
Improve background check systems
Invest in new programs to incentivize state adoption of gun licensing laws and establish voluntary gun buyback pilot programs.
$200 million to support a new Community Violence Intervention initiative to implement evidence-based community violence interventions locally. This funding is an addition to the American Jobs Plan's $5 billion over eight years investment in community violence interventions to address the increase in homicides disproportionately affecting Black and brown Americans.
Extends Housing Vouchers and Helps End Homelessness.
$30.4 billion for Housing Choice Vouchers,
Expand housing assistance to 200,000 more families, with a focus on those who are homeless or fleeing domestic violence.
$500 million increase for Homeless Assistance Grants to support more than 100,000 households—including survivors of domestic violence and homeless youth, helping prevent and reduce homelessness. • Invests in Civil Rights Offices Across Government.
Significant increases for civil rights offices and activities across Federal agencies to ensure that the Nation's laws are enforced fairly and equitably.
Invests in Efforts to End Gender-Based Violence. Th
$1 billion in total funding for DOJ Violence Against Women Act programs, nearly double the 2021 level, including funding for new programs.
Provides funding at HHS for domestic violence hotlines and for cash assistance, medical support and services, and emergency shelters for survivors.
Advances Efforts to Build a Fair, Orderly, and Humane Immigration System.
Rebuild the Nation's badly damaged refugee admissions program and support up to 125,000 admissions in 2022.
$861 million in assistance to Central America.
$345 million for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to adjudicate naturalization and asylum cases of those who have been waiting for years.
Increase the budget of the Executive Office for Immigration Review by 21 percent to $891 million to reduce court backlogs by hiring 100 new immigration judges and support teams.
Upholds Our Trust Responsibility to Tribal Nations.
Increase funding for the Indian Health Service (IHS) by $2.2 billion and provides $900 million to fund tribal efforts to expand affordable housing, improve housing conditions and infrastructure, and increase economic opportunities for low-income families.
Increase of more than $450 million to facilitate climate mitigation, resilience, adaptation, and environmental justice projects in Indian Country, including investment to begin the process of transitioning tribal colleges in the country to renewable energy.
GENERATING SHARED PROSPERITY AND PUTTING OUR COUNTRY ON A SOUND FISCAL COURSE The President's Budget provides a fiscally responsible path for delivering a stronger, more prosperous economy. Under the Budget's proposals, the cost of Federal debt payments will remain well below historical levels throughout the coming decade. And in later years, when the Nation faces larger fiscal challenges, the Budget's proposals will reduce the deficit. The Budget proposes to reform our tax system by changing the rules of the road for the largest corporations and highest income Americans. The American Jobs Plan reforms the corporate tax code to incentivize job creation and investment here in the United States, stop unfair and wasteful profit shifting to tax havens, ensure that large corporations are paying their fair share, and stop a race-to-the-bottom in corporate tax rates around the world. The American Families Plan revitalizes tax enforcement to ensure that high-income Americans pay the tax they owe under the law--ending the unfair system of enforcement that collects almost all taxes due on wages, while regularly collecting a smaller share of business and capital income. The plan will eliminate long-standing loopholes, including lower taxes on capital gains and dividends for the wealthy, that reward wealth over work. Over time, the savings from these reforms will exceed the cost of the investments, and by large and growing amounts. The American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan together are paid for over 15 years. And the full set of proposals in the President's Budget reduce the annual deficit by the end of the ten-year budget window and every year thereafter. In the second decade, the President's Budget proposals cut deficits by over $2 trillion. A Budget that added to long-term deficits would worsen fiscal health, while a Budget that reduced deficits today by underinvesting in the American people would result in slower, more stratified growth that would cause more damage than one that invests appropriately. The President's Budget responsibly balances these needs and risks by charting an economically and fiscally sound course for the near term and the long term