House Democrats Stand for America’s Families
By passing the Build Back Better Act, House Democrats stood up for America’s families and invested in greater self-reliance for us and our children, now and into our shared future. While every country around the world has faced problems in the wake of Covid, new data from the OECD show that our nation’s economy is the first to rebound past our pre-pandemic peak. We are thankful for the prudent investments from the Biden-Harris administration and Congressional Democrats, including this spring’s American Rescue Plan, which helped schools reopen and every American adult who wanted a vaccine to receive one.
The Build Back Better Act is the next in this series of investments. Among its highlights:
- Universal pre-kindergarten, so all of our three- and four-year-olds have a chance to learn, to grow, and to thrive.
- An extension of the expanded child tax credit and our nation’s first step toward paid family leave, so every family can continue to make strides toward self-sufficiency and protect important times for healing and transition.
- Support for childcare and homecare, so all families can afford to take care of their loved ones and receive the support they need from well-trained professionals.
- Lowering healthcare costs, including lowering the price of insulin and other needed medicines and expanded support for individuals and families buying health insurance, including people left behind by states not expanding Medicaid. Hearing will also now be included in Medicare.
- The largest investments to date in encouraging the development of clean, local energy production and shifting to power sources that will lower home heating costs and reduce the frequency of extreme weather events, such as the tragedy we are currently witnessing in the Pacific Northwest.
- These investments are paid for by stepped up enforcement against superrich tax cheats who have defrauded our nation by refusing to pay into our shared treasury, by establishing a minimum tax on our largest corporations, taxes on corporations that choose to buy back their stock instead of paying out dividends and ship jobs overseas, and other provisions that fulfill President Biden’s pledge to “reward work, not wealth.”
We call on the Senate to pass Build Back Better without delay.
We are disappointed that Representatives Biggs, Curtis, Moore, Owens, Simpson, and Stewart have once again voted against providing greater opportunity for families to achieve self-reliance. As Utah and Latter-day Saint families have stated, the expanded child tax credit has enabled entrepreneurship, job training, and increased prosperity and health, but while we are disappointed by these representatives’ opposition, we accept that we can have good-faith political differences on how to best help families live in security and peace.
However, we must object to these representatives voting against holding their colleague Paul Gosar accountable for making violent threats against another member of Congress. Whether they refuse to see Representative Gosar’s actions as wrong or they fear primary challenges from people who support Representative Gosar’s actions, it is the same: moral cowardice that undercuts the American promise of liberty for all. Even as we disagree on the best policies to help families, we can do so without being disagreeable, and that starts with standing up to the extremism and tolerance for lawlessness that is apparently taking root in the Republican caucus.
We will continue to work for greater opportunity for all, to make sure that work is rewarded, and that elected leaders are held accountable for their actions.
