PENNSYLVANIA — Today, the Pennsylvania Capital-Star highlighted how President Biden’s Build Back Better framework currently under consideration in Congress will impact Pennsylvanians’ lives. Among the many life-changing provisions in this plan, Penn. Capital-Star runs down the five big ways the White House’s agenda would help the commonwealth’s children, families, and workers.
Pennsylvania Capital-Star: The Top 5 Ways Biden’s domestic agenda helps Pa. kids, families, workers
Assuming all goes to plan, and something doesn’t upset the apple cart (again), Democratic leaders in the U.S. House are looking for votes as early as Tuesday on President Joe Biden’s pared-down $1.75 trillion domestic agenda.
An approval, as the Associated Press reported over the weekend, would clear the way for a House vote on the White House’s $1.2 trillion, bipartisan infrastructure deal.
The broad outlines of the plan emerged last Thursday, as Capital-Star Washington Reporter Ariana Figueroa wrote. But amid all the national hubbub, Pennsylvanians may be justifiably wondering what’s in it for them.
Enter the progressive Pennsylvania Budget & Policy Center, which thoughtfully dropped a thorough analysis over the weekend of how the White House’s 10-year spending plan would impact Pennsylvanians’ everyday lives.
[…]Universal Pre-School: Right now, only 16 percent of the state’s 244,279 eligible 3- and 4-year-olds have access to publicly funded preschool programs. Those who do not pay an average of $8,600 a year for such services, the analysis showed. The White House’s plan would allow the state to expand access to publicly-funded preschool to more than 204,716 kids a year, and increase the quality of programs for all kids, according to the PBPC’s analysis.
“Children who go to good preschools do better in school, are more likely to graduate from college [and] have higher incomes,” the center’s executive director, Marc Stier, wrote in the analysis, adding that ” … Providing access to preschool to every child is a policy that’s critical to reducing economic and racial inequity in the next generation.”
Child Tax Credit: The bill now before lawmakers extends the popular child tax credit payments of $250 to $300 a month, and it includes “the permanent refundability of the Child Tax Credit, which means that families with the lowest incomes will continue to receive the full Child Tax Credit over the long run,” Stier wrote.
By the numbers, that means the 892,000 Pennsylvania children aged 17 and younger who were previously left out of the full $2,000 credit will now continue to benefit from it, Stier wrote, while, “the 140,000 children under the age of 18 who were lifted above the poverty line will stay above it. And the additional 171,000 children under 18 who were lifted closer to the poverty line would remain there.”
Free Food: The plan would provide access to free school meals for about 251,000 Pennsylvania students during the school year, and allow some 947,153 students to purchase food during the summer months, Stier wrote. Right now about 15 percent of all Pennsylvania children live in homes experiencing food insecurity, according to the analysis.
Health Care Expansion: The White House’s plan calls for closing a coverage gap in Medicaid, thus expanding insurance to those who do not have it, and extend insurance premium reductions included in the American Rescue Plan for people who buy their own insurance through 2025. It also would expand Medicare coverage for older Americans, according to the PBPC’s analysis.
In Pennsylvania, 122,000 people currently without coverage would gain it, and the 125,800 of the state’s poorest residents would save money on their coverage, Stier wrote. And about 140,000 commonwealth residents who benefited from reduced premiums under the previous American Rescue Plan would continue receive the reduction, Stier wrote.
Housing & Rental Assistance: The plan calls for expanding rental assistance for renters across the state, while “also increasing the supply of high-quality housing through the construction and rehabilitation of over 1 million affordable housing units nationwide,” Stier wrote (States notably lagged in distributing such aid, even as an eviction crisis loomed earlier this year, according to published reports.).
The plan also would “address the capital needs of the entire public housing stock in our state and it includes one of the largest investments in down-payment assistance in history, enabling more first-generation homebuyers to purchase their first home,” Stier wrote, noting that, “down-payment assistance is a major step toward repairing the damage that redlining did in preventing Black families from accumulating wealth through home ownership.”
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