The American Families Plan: Potentially the Most Important Proposal for Children Ever
There are moments in time when historic or transformational changes are made by our nation’s leaders to really make a difference for children and families in this country. If President Biden’s just released American Families Plan becomes law, today would be one of those moments.
Unfortunately, the reality we face is that children are often merely an afterthought of election officials, as kids do not vote, do not make campaign contributions or operate a Political Action Committee (PAC), and do not employ a team of lobbyists to demand that lawmakers hear their concerns and address their needs.
To overcome these barriers for children, we at First Focus Campaign for Children established a Legislative Scorecard to identify Champions for Children in the U.S. House and Senate who do positive things for children and families because it is the right thing to do and not because a special interest gave them a campaign contribution. We also created a Children’s Budget to identify and analyze all investments in the federal budget and to hold the White House and Congress accountable for whether they are succeeding or failing our children. In that endeavor, we have often quoted then Sen. Joe Biden and his words:
Don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.
When candidate Biden was running for president, other candidates had a more robust children’s platform, including his Vice President, Kamala Harris.
And when President Biden was set to release his American Rescue Plan (ARP) a few months ago, it was clear that provisions of important to children and families, such as the expansion and improvement of the Child Tax Credit, were not in the initial package until Members of Congress, such as Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), pushed hard to have significant improvements for kids included in the final proposal. Consequently, the ARP included a number of important provisions for children, and we applauded the President and Members of Congress for making it a reality.
As important and historic as that was, today’s release of the President’s American Families Plan has the potential to be the most important piece of legislation for children and families to ever be enacted into law.
Please understand that I do not say this lightly. I have worked in various capacities in Washington, D.C. since 1990, but the President’s proposal is the most comprehensive for children that I have ever seen in more than three decades.
The American Families Plan recognizes that the global pandemic and economic recession have put enormous stress on children and families across this country. While others dismissed the impact that COVID-19 has had on children, the reality is that every aspect of the lives of children have been negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and economic recession. Simply put: “The Kids Are Not Alright.”
When the President said he was going to put out a plan to address family issues, many of us in the children’s advocacy community were hopeful but skeptical. We have been disappointed far too often and have watched the share of investments in children at the federal level drop to an all-time low.
As President Biden has said, these budgets have told us that our kids have not been valued in the past.
Fortunately, today the Administration showed us he does value children and families, as he put significant resources and investments behind the words. His plan fully recognizes the enormous programs that have plagued our children even before current crisis, including child poverty, inadequate early childhood supports, education inequities, substandard and unaffordable child care, health care affordability and access to care, the need for family medical leave, and college affordability. This plan also takes significant strides in addresses racial and socio-economic inequities among our children.
Per the First Focus on Children staff analysis, the following are among the most important provisions in the Biden Administration package for children and families:
1. Expanding and Improving Child-related Tax Credits: The proposal extends the critically important tax provisions in the American Rescue Plan that have the potential to cut child poverty by an estimated 47%, according to an analysis by the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, and will benefit an estimated 66 million children — or more than 90% of all the children in this country. The American Families Plan achieves this by:
- Making the Child Tax Credit fully refundable on a permanent basis, meaning that even families who earn too little to qualify under current law would receive the refund now and in the future.
- Expanding the credit to include 17-year-olds for the first time.
- Increasing the Child Tax Credit from $2,000 per child to $3,000 for children between the ages of 6–18; to $3,600 for children under the age of 6 through 2025.
- The plan also would deliver the Child Tax Credit regularly, meaning that families will not need to wait until tax season to receive a refund. Instead, they will receive regular payments that allow them to cover household expenses as they arise.
- Making permanent the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) improvements, which made the credit refundable for the first time and will give families, dependent on their income, a credit for up to 50% of up to $8000 in eligible expenses for one child under age 13 and up to $16,000 for two or more qualifying children.
Nearly 300 national, state and local organizations have called for these provisions to be made permanent and we look forward to helping the President meet his stated commitment to “working with Congress to achieve his ultimate goal of making permanent the Child Tax Credit as well as all of the expansions he signed into law in the American Rescue Plan.”
2. Providing for Universal Pre-School: The plan would provide $200 billion in funding to states to offer free, high-quality preschool to all 3- and 4-year-olds in this country, benefitting an estimated five million children and saving the average family an estimated $13,000. The proposal would include a new minimum wage for all pre-K and Head Start teachers.
3. Expanding Child Care: The president’s proposal seeks to provide $225 billion in funding to make child care more affordable by covering all child care expenses for low-income families and capping child care expenses at no more than 7% of their income for all children under the age of 5. The plan also seeks to improve the quality of child care by investing in curriculum development, smaller classes and a better-paid workforce.
4. Increasing Support and Funding for Teachers, Early Childhood Educators and Child Care Providers: The plan “calls on Congress to invest $9 billion in American teachers, addressing shortages, improving training and supports for teachers, and boosting teacher diversity.” It would also provide funding to expand the education of and wages of early childhood educators and child care providers and educators.
5. Creating a National Paid Family and Medical Leave Program: The proposal calls for $225 billion to guarantee 12 weeks of paid parental, family and personal illness/safety leave by the 10th year of the initiative, but offers workers three days of bereavement leave beginning in the very first year.
6. Improving Child Nutrition and Reducing Child Hunger: The plan would address the problem of hunger for children in the summer, when they no longer have access to school meals, by investing more than $25 billion to extend the Pandemic-EBT Demonstrations through the summer. This extension will allow the families of the 29 million children receiving free and reduced-price meals during the school year to purchase food during summer months. The proposal also makes a number of other changes that would expand school meals to an estimated 9.3 million children by improving the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) and expanding coverage for low-income children participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Program (SNAP), Medicaid, and Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
7. Extending Affordable Care Act Family Care Tax Credits: The proposal invests $200 billion in extending health care tax credits that lower health insurance premiums for individuals and families purchasing health care through the Affordable Care Act (ACA). An estimated 9 million people will save money on their premiums and 4 million uninsured people will gain coverage as a result. The plan also commits to making investments in “maternal health and. . .the families of veterans receiving health care services.”
8. Expanding Access to College: The president’s plan also offers two years of free community college for all Americans (including DREAMers), an additional $1,400 in Pell Grant awards to low-income students, investments to improve college retention and completion rates, and investments to subsidized tuition and programs at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), and other Hispanic, Native American-Pacific Islander, and other minority-serving institutions (MSIs).
In total, the package provides an estimated $1.8 trillion in much needed and long-sought investments and tax credits for American children and families over a 10-year period.
The road to success is, however, a long one. We have many miles to go and both the House and Senate must approve it before the President can sign it into law.
As Nobel prize winning poet Gabriela Mistral said:
Many things we need can wait. The child cannot. Now is the time his or her bones are formed, his or her mind developed. To them, we cannot say tomorrow, their name is today.
We urge parents, caregivers, grandparents, teachers, early childhood and child care professionals, pediatricians, and child advocates across this country to light up the phone lines of their House and Senate members and urge them to make the American Families Plan a reality.
The time is now for our children.
