At the moment, President Biden is trying to pull of something much harder — and potentially much more beneficial to working families — than the uphill battle of convincing Congress to authorize a new round of stimulus checks. Specifically, the president is trying to build support for passage of an all-new stimulus bill, his second stimulus legislation in three months to carry a price tag of more than $1 trillion, with this new bill poised to transfer a staggeringly large amount of wealth from the federal government to taxpayers.
Forget one-time, $1,400 stimulus checks. The so-called “American Families Plan,” which Biden proposed in an address to Congress at the end of April, would save the average family $14,800 per year in child care costs, among other proposed benefits. Complicating matters, though, is the fact that a new analysis from the Penn Wharton Budget Model is that the American Families Plan would actually cost $700 billion more than the $1.8 trillion the Biden administration originally said it would cost. Let’s take a closer look at what’s in the legislation.
At the moment, almost three in five voters say they support the American Families Plan, which is by and large an education and child care legislative package. That’s according to a new Morning Consult/Politico poll of 1,991 registered voters, which found that some 58% of Americans support the plan.
As we alluded to already, this new plan includes benefits ranging from an expansion of the federal child tax credit through 2025, plus greater access to Medicaid, paid family leave, free community college tuition, and much more. According to a summary of the plan from the White House, “When fully implemented, the President’s plan will provide 3 million children from low- and middle-income families with high-quality care, saving the average family $14,800 a year on child care expenses.”
The plan gets to that point, in part, by proposing the creation of a national comprehensive paid family and medical leave program.
“Currently, 95% of the lowest wage workers, mostly women and workers of color, lack access to any paid family leave,” the White House summary continues. “Sixty-two percent of Black adults and 73% of Latino adults are either ineligible for or cannot afford to take unpaid leave, compared to 60% of white adults. Additionally, Black and Latina mothers are more likely than white women to report being let go by an employer or quitting their jobs after giving birth in order to have some leave.”
Meanwhile, let’s also not forget Biden’s proposed four-year expansion of the federal child tax credit, which will provide families $3,600 over the course of a year for children under age 6 and $3,000 for children six years and up. Families will get that money in the form of what are essentially stimulus checks, sent out monthly by the IRS starting in July.
