Benjammin wrote:Imagine if Democrats cared about working class people and turned down the woke cultural rhetoric. Even Democrats that look somewhat normal like Eric Adams, mayor of New York City, get into office and lose all sense of what is reasonable and possible. Often Republicans use that unfairly, but there's enough there to use it. A coherent COVID policy would be helpful as well, although anything is better than Trump who actively promoted things that increased the death count significantly.
The good news is they’ve proposed a bill that actually addresses that.
Biden’s bill would:
Create free and universal prekindergarten throughout the United States, which would be the largest expansion of American public education in a century.
Establish a de facto basic income for working-class families. Previously, Biden’s American Rescue Plan (ARP) increased the maximum value of the child tax credit (CTC) from $2,000 to $3,000 for each child over 6 and $3,600 for each child below that age. Separately, ARP made the child tax credit fully refundable for the first time, meaning that kids whose parents earned too little to owe federal taxes would still be eligible for CTC payments. In effect, this turned the CTC into a near-universal child allowance. The Build Back Better framework only extends the higher-value CTC for a year (meaning that, in 2023, it goes back to being worth $2,000 per kid). But the bill would make the CTC’s refundability permanent. Which is to say: For the first time since Bill Clinton’s welfare reform, America’s poorest families will be guaranteed cash assistance, no strings attached.
Invest $555 billion into combating climate change. Manchin killed Biden’s Clean Electricity Performance Program, a policy that would have required all electric utilities to draw 80 percent of their power from non-carbon sources by 2030, or else face steep fines. But the West Virginia senator (and minor coal baron) has apparently left the rest of Biden’s climate agenda alone. In fact, as the White House cut its initial bill in half, it barely reduced the size of its climate provisions. The fact that Biden gave decarbonization such priority is a testament to the climate movement’s success. And it could very well prove transformational.
Expand access to affordable health insurance. The bill would reduce insurance premiums for 9 million Americans through a (temporary) expansion of Affordable Care Act subsidies, and extend premium-free health insurance to low-income Americans in states that haven’t expanded Medicaid (through a complex tax-credit scheme).
And there’s more
https://nymag.com/author/eric-levitzAnd they’ve passed another bill that also helps the working class.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/3-major-wins-for-workers-in-the-bipartisan-infrastructure-package/Democrats are doing the work of helping people and they should be rewarded by voters for doing the right thing.
