CNN’s Tom Foreman explains exactly what’s in the legislation and how it might affect you.
What can you buy for 3.5 trillion dollars? High on the deliverables list is education. The plan would put $200 billion dollars into pre-k, educating three and four-year-olds, affecting roughly five million kids.
It would provide two years of tuition-free community college for older students with the feds picking up seventy-five percent of the tab, states covering the rest.
There is $83 billion for public school improvements.
Also more money for universities that serve minority groups including historically Black colleges.
Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) said, “The ‘D’ in Democrat is for ‘deliver.’ We need to deliver for the American people.”
There is help with child care so middle to low-income families with kids under five would spend no more than seven percent of their income on such services.
It proposes to help low-income families save money by making the earned income tax credit permanent.
And it would pump $35 billion into child nutrition, giving nine million more children free school lunches.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said, “We’re not leaving anything behind. So we’re not passing an infrastructure bill and then saying, ‘Oh, there is no urgency to taking on climate change or immigration or any of these other things.’”
$150 billion in grants is aimed at helping electric companies provide clean energy; $9 billion to modernize the power grid.
There are rebates for consumers going more green, money for electrifying the fleet of federal vehicles, and for conservation in agriculture and forestry aimed at —among other things—reducing the threat of wildfires.
Critics, of course, are calling it an inferno of spending.
Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y) said, “that contains significant tax increases on our small businesses, on individuals, it is a policy expansion using just partisan exercise of Democratic votes only.”
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