What’s in and what’s out as Democrats reshape Biden bill

After months of talks, Democrats are edging closer to an agreement on what programs and policies to include in President Joe Biden’s massive plan to expand health and safety net programs and combat global warming.

Democrats are scaling back some investments or shortening the time when those programs would be up and running to fit within an approximately $2 trillion budget over 10 years, rather than the $3.5 trillion budget plan originally envisioned.

Still, Democrats are hoping the programs will prove so popular that Congress will continue to fund them in the years ahead.

The package is very much in flux, and it won’t be possible to fully assess the details until legislative text is released:

• A child tax credit increase would continue for another year. As part of a COVID19 relief bill, Democrats increased the tax credit to $3,000 per child age 6-17 and $3,600 per child age 5 and under. Budget hawks worry that a one-year extension is a budgetary tool that will lower the cost of the program on paper but mask its true costs because lawmakers tend to continue programs rather than let them expire.

• Plans to expand Medicare to include dental, vision and hearing aids are being pared back. Biden said he likes the idea, but with Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona objecting, the proposal is “a reach.” Instead, Democrats are looking at offering seniors an $800 voucher to access dental care as well as another program for hearing aids that Sinema may support. However, the vision care component, Biden said, has been harder to resolve and there is no consensus yet.

• Expanding Medicaid in about a dozen states and providing subsidies that reduce a participant’s cost of “Obamacare” plans are also still part of the mix. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the health insurance components in the bill would reduce the number of uninsured by about 3.9 million people over the next decade.

• The U.S. would join a long list of nations with a paid family leave program allowing workers to take time off for childbirth, to care for a new child or to deal with a serious health issue of a family member. But the 12 weeks of paid time off Biden had proposed likely will be pared back, he said.

• Universal prekindergarten for all 3- and 4-year-olds and child care subsidies for poorer and middle-income Americans are still in. Biden’s plan calls for parents earning up to about $115,000 to pay no more than 7% of their income on child care, with the poorest families getting free child care. He has proposed a tax credit for as much as half of a family’s spending on child care, up to $4,000 for one child or $8,000 for two or more children.

• Free community college is probably out, although Biden is looking to increase the size of Pell grants.

• It looks as if a program considered a cornerstone of Biden’s plan to fight climate change is out. That program would have offered grants to power companies that increase clean energy generation by 4% each year and fines for those that do not.