President Biden recently announced the American Families Plan, legislation that is designed to invest in children, families and our economic future. Here are 15 provisions from the proposal that will help working people:
- Invests in education from early childhood to postsecondary so that young people can learn, grow and gain skills they need to succeed.
- Provides universal, high-quality preschool for all three- and four-year-olds, which not only helps prepare those children to be lifelong learners, it lessens the stress on working parents.
- Provides Americans two free years of community college, including to Dreamers.
- Investments in making college more affordable for low- and middle-income students, including providing assistance to colleges that serve communities that have been historically marginalized, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), institutions such as Hispanic-serving institutions, Asian American, Native American and Pacific Islander-serving institutions, and other minority-serving institutions (MSIs).
- Invests in teacher training and support.
- Provides direct support to families to insure that we spend no more than 7% of our income on child care and to ensure that this child care is of high quality.
- Creates a national paid family and medical leave program that will bring us in line with similar countries.
- Reduces childhood hunger by providing nutrition assistance to families in need.
- Extends key tax cuts that benefit lower- and middle-income working families, including the Child Tax Credit, the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit.
- Extends expanded health insurance tax credits, which would help 9 million people maintain health insurance and allow 4 million more to gain it.
- Expansion of Pell Grants for students seeking a certificate, two- or four-year degree.
- Modernize the unemployment insurance system to make access more equitable while continuing to prevent fraud.
- Lowers prescription drug costs by letting Medicare negotiate prices.
- Extends health care tax credits and invests in various health care programs so that millions of Americans will gain health insurance.
- Reforms the tax code, which will result in fewer loopholes for the wealthy and create more opportunity for working families.