On Friday, the House Democrats passed their version of President Biden’s Build Back Better Plan, which proposes improvements to health care, climate, education and tax laws.  This is in addition to the already passed Infrastructure bill which was signed into law on Monday by Biden.

The Build Back Better bill will next be taken up by the Senate, where its fate is still uncertain and substantial modifications of its contents are expected if it can be passed at all.  The House version currently has a price tag of $2.2 trillion, which is higher than the $1.75 trillion previously under consideration by Senate Democrats.  In this article, I will discuss the House bill and its potential impact on American lives.

The table below shows the various items addressed by the bill and the amounts of funding allocated to them.  Only a few of the categories in the table are discussed here.

Funding amounting to as much as $775 billion is planned to lighten the financial burden on American families for the education of their children.

The cost of child care has always been an issue for working parents.  In the post-pandemic era, it is known that lack of affordable child care is one of the reasons women have been slow to rejoin the work force.  The availability of universal pre-kindergarten would provide additional help to mothers who struggle to balance work and family life.  But importantly, it would help level the playing field for poor children who tend to fall behind because they do not have access to early child development programs at a critical age.  The affordable child care and pre-kindergarten packages are designed to provide universal free prekindergarten for all 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds and free child care to the lowest-income families, while families with annual income lower than $300000 would see their child care expenses capped at 7% of their income.

Earlier this year, Biden’s American Rescue program increased the Child Tax Credit from $2000 to between $3000 and $3600, depending on the child’s age.  There are indications that the increased amounts are helping lift millions of children out of poverty and reduce food insecurity.   However, they are not permanent.  The new bill keeps the increases through 2022 and also makes the credit fully refundable, which means low-income people who do not file a tax return are able to get it.

The paid 4-week family and medical leave item has been scaled down from the 12 weeks in the original bill.  It is unclear whether it will survive debate in the Senate.

Experts estimate that the plan will help reduce U.S. annual carbon dioxide emissions by one sixth of current annual emissions. It will do so by encouraging consumers, through tax credits and rebates, to pursue clean energy alternatives to fossil fuels.

The credit to buy an electric vehicle will increase from $7500 to $12500.  There will be credits for buying certain used vehicles, and a 30% credit for electric 2- and 3-wheeled vehicles (up to $7500).  There will be credits for the installation of solar panels and for the conversion of gas or fossil-fueled appliances to electric alternatives and heat pumps.  Rebates worth $2000 to $4000 will available for energy efficiency retrofits.

Climate resilience measures could create job opportunities for the youth through the hiring of hundreds of thousands of young people to restore forests and wetlands and mitigate the effects of rising global temperatures.

Funding would be provided for clean energy and manufacturing, including research on renewable energy and creation of manufacturing facilities for electric vehicles (or conversion of existing ones for that purpose).

Also included in the bill are provisions to raise, through taxes, fees and the closing of loopholes, revenues from the fossil fuel industry.

In the health care area, the bill attempts to expand the Affordable Care Act to extend insurance coverage to 7 million Americans.  The expanded premium subsidies associated with ACA plans, started under the American Rescue Plan during the spring, will be extended until 2025.  Also, in the twelve states where Medicaid expansions were not adopted, low-income citizens will have access, until 2025, to ACA plans without paying a monthly premium.

Medicare benefits for older Americans will include hearing benefits.  Also, Medicare will be able to negotiate with manufacturers to lower prices for 10 expensive drugs, including medicines for cancer patients, taking effect in 2025.

The bill would set an annual $2,000 cap on out-of-pocket expenses for drugs for seniors in Medicare’s prescription drug programs.  It would also cap monthly expenses for insulin at $35 for diabetic patients.  Currently, more than 1 million older Americans annually incur out-of-pocket drug costs above $2000.  According to RAND Corporation, drugs in the U.S. cost about 250 percent of the average for the 38 advanced nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Unlike those nations, the United States has so far refused to negotiate directly for drug prices with manufacturers.  As a result, the cost of cancer drugs such as Revlimid keeps rising: The median Medicare patient taking Revlimid faced $14,461 in out-of-pocket costs in 2019, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

So far, debates on TV and elsewhere appear to have focused on the cost of the programs proposed by the Biden administration and the Democrats in Congress.  It is often mentioned that most Americans support the programs, but at the same time, the claim is made that most Americans do not know what is in the programs.  Hopefully, this article will help readers understand them better.  Christian readers should also remember the following:

• The proposals in the education area help strengthen the nation’s social safety net, a worthwhile goal that is supported by the Old Testament and the New Testament.
• The climate proposals support the biblical goal of maintaining God’s creation, which God put under human care.
• The health care provisions work toward the goal of treating health care as an individual right rather than a prerogative of the rich.

When Jesus sent out his apostles, he said:

“As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.” (Matthew 10:7-8)