The American Families Plan: Keeping Our Commitments
Over twenty-five years ago, President Gordon B. Hinckley announced “The Family: A Proclamation to the World.” It concludes with a call to “responsible citizens and officers of government everywhere to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family.” The recent pandemic has highlighted the deep needs faced by families, particularly when it comes to having the freedom to care for one other and having a foundation for achieving self-reliance.
President Biden’s American Families Plan is a key step to helping families become self-sufficient while providing a foundation for our children’s success. Expanding our moral commitment to a free, appropriate public education for all to include pre-kindergarten and community college is a prudent “hand-up” that enables our nation’s families to adapt to changing realities. The expansion of the Pell Grant alone will help our young adults complete their schooling in a timely manner. Continued support for families purchasing insurance through the American Care Act marketplace will foster entrepreneurship and small-business development. The provision of summer meals to more children, and the expansion of free meals to more K-12 schools, will mean that our children and our neighbors’ children will grow up healthier and more able to learn and thrive.
We are also pleased to see a real commitment to paid family and medical leave, affording parents — including fathers — greater opportunity to bond with and care for their children and for adult children to care for their parents, helping foster ties across generations and enabling the family to be a fundamental unit of care.
We note that the costs of this plan are rooted in more fairly rewarding work, not wealth, and improving enforcement of our tax laws against those among the super-wealthy who have benefited from our nation but have previously shirked their responsibility. While there are many ways to earn bread by “sweat of [our] brow,” we are mindful of President Kimball’s warnings against getting “something for nothing, something without effort, something without paying the full price,” and so we are encouraged that this investment in our families is paid for by restoring fairness to our tax code, as President Ronald Reagan did in 1986, and closes the carried-interest and trust-fund loopholes.
Six months ago, President Biden received a historic amount of support from American Latter-day Saints, including a plurality of votes from Latter-day Saints under 40. We are delighted that he has so quickly followed through on his pledge to support our families, to promote self-reliance, and to fulfill our nation’s moral commitments to our children. We call on our Latter-day Saint members of Congress, including Senators Romney, Lee, and Crapo to support the American Families Plan.
