Build Back Better: Update

President Biden met with lawmakers to lay out a framework on a $1.85 trillion effort to spend heavily on climate change, child care and a wide range of other economic programs. So, what is in the Build Back Better Framework:

• $555 billion to fight climate change, largely through tax incentives for low-emission sources of energy.
• $400 billion to provide universal prekindergarten to 3- and 4-year-olds, and to significantly reduce health care costs for working families earning up to $300,000 a year.
• $200 billion to extend an expanded tax credit for parents through 2022, and to permanently allow parents to benefit from the child tax credit even if they do not earn enough money to have income tax liability.
• $165 billion to reduce health care premiums for people who are covered through the Affordable Care Act, to provide insurance for an additional four million people through Medicaid and to offer hearing coverage through Medicare.
• $150 billion to reduce a waiting list for in-home care for seniors and disabled Americans, and to improve wages for home health care workers.
• $150 billion to build one million affordable housing units.
• $100 billion for immigration streamlining.
• $40 billion for worker training and higher education, including increasing annual Pell grants by $550.

The plan is to offset the spending with $2 trillion in revenue increases:

• A 15 percent minimum tax on the reported profits of large corporations.
• Efforts to reduce profit-shifting by multinational companies, including a separate 15 percent minimum tax on profits earned by U.S. companies abroad — and tax penalties for companies that have their headquarters in global tax havens.
• A 1 percent tax on corporate stock buybacks.
• Increased enforcement for large corporations and the wealthy at the Internal Revenue Service.
• An additional 5 percent tax on incomes exceeding $10 million a year and another 3 percent tax on incomes above $25 million.
• Efforts to limit business losses for the very wealthy and to impose a 3.8 percent Medicare tax on certain people earning more than $400,000 a year who did not previously pay that tax.

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