THE STAKES INVOLVED

An Opportunity to Shape the Future for Our Children, Grandchildren, and Ourselves

In the 2020 campaign, President Biden called for transformational investments in children and families – over $1.5 trillion over ten years in a refundable child tax credit, child care and preschool, family leave, home-and-community based services, IDEA, Title I, and a community health workforce.

Congress followed through in the American Rescue Plan Act by starting these as a response to Covid-19. President Biden’s $3.6 trillion Back Better plan incorporated them as a key part of creating a human capital infrastructure and workforce for the 21st century, with physical infrastructure and environmental infrastructure.

The House passed most of these provisions, but the Senate fell two votes short in doing so, with the 2021-2 Congress addressing the physical and environmental infrastructures but leaving the most important part of Build Back Better – that equipping children to realize their potential and leaders for our future – to the next Congress.

  Child and family policy leaders and advocates applauded and led many of the efforts to design the child elements of the American Rescue Plan Act and worked to secure Senate support for making them permanent. Public opinion polls showed strong and bipartisan support for virtually all of the elements in the Plan. The temporary increase to the Child Tax Credit in the American Rescue Plan Act itself reduced child poverty by nearly forty percent and extended to over ninety percent of all families with children.

While not included in the final compromises, strong Congressional advocates for all the provisions emerged, with sources of financing, through rolling back some of the tax cuts directed to the wealthiest individuals and corporations enacted under President Trump in 2017.