John, this week, we passed the American Rescue Plan—signed by President Biden yesterday afternoon.
This is a historic bill, and there’s quite a lot to it. So today I want to break down a few different parts of it with you. Please read below, and if you have any questions for me, feel free to submit them here. I will answer a few of your questions in a future email.
Let’s dive in:
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The size of the American Rescue Plan The bill is $1.9 trillion dollars in spending. Now, that’s really big. But the bill is so big because the problems we have before us are so big. We have record-number unemployment rates—especially for women of color. Schools are still closed. And food bank lines are still long. You may be familiar with the saying “a day later and a dollar short.” We are certainly more than a day late with this bill, but it did not come a dollar short. We really wanted this bill to meet the size of the problems we’re facing. |
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Survival checks Survival checks will be $1,400, and about 85% of households in the country will be receiving survival checks. People can expect to see their checks within the next 1-4 weeks. Now, there are different conditions for whether you receive a survival check or not. And this is based on the most recent taxes you filed, whether that was in 2019 or 2020. So if you’re single and earning $80,000 or more, if you’re a single parent—the head of household—earning $120,000 or more, or if you are married and your family is earning $160,000 or more, you will not receive this round of survival checks. |
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The child tax credit This is one of my favorite parts of the American Rescue Plan. I know that “tax credit” doesn’t sound super exciting at first, but trust me, it’s amazing. This part of the plan cuts child poverty in half. Families that have children aged 6-17 years old will receive a $3,000 child tax credit per child, and families that have children younger than 6 will receive a $3,6000 child tax credit per child. Similar to the survival checks we talked about above, there are different conditions for whether a family receives a child tax credit, and that will be based on the most recent taxes you filed. If you are single and earning $75,000 or more, if you’re a single parent—the head of household—and earning $112,500 or more, or if you are married and your family earns $150,000 or more, you will not be receiving this tax credit. Now, I personally find a few issues with these conditions. Because I believe that no child should be receiving less benefits because of the marital status of their caregiver. But if you’re a child from a single parent family, you are less likely to receive this support. I’m calling this the single parent penalty, and it’s something I’m still paying very close attention to and trying to fix. But for right now, this will help so many children who are currently living below the poverty line. This credit goes into effect in July of this year, it’s going to be refundable on next year’s taxes, and right now it’s going to be available for two years, but we have a proposal to make this permanent. |
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Unemployment As you know, the pandemic has caused really high unemployment rates, the worst that we’ve seen since the great depression. In the American Rescue Plan, we provide a continued increase in the unemployment check that people receive. Now let me be clear, unemployment benefits are a form of insurance that we all pay into while we’re working. So this is not a “giveaway,” as some like to call it. We all pay into this system, and in many cases unemployment checks simply are not enough to make ends meet. So what we did in this bill was add $300 per week to the unemployment benefit, and this will continue until September 6, 2021. And $10,200 of unemployment benefits will go untaxed next year—this increases the unemployment benefits that people get to keep. |
Phew. That was a lot, I know. But there’s still so much more to this plan. The parts that we just discussed really cover the direct, monetary support that families are going to receive. Now let’s talk about getting people back into the workplace and children back into schools.
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Vaccines So many people are waiting on the edge of their seats right now to get a vaccine. The American Rescue Plan allots $20 billion for vaccine programs to speed up this process —the hope is to double the amount of vaccines in the month of March and for months to follow. In the meantime, we have to continue testing and tracing this virus. So there will be $51 billion directed towards testing and tracing efforts. |
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Getting kids back to school This is another favorite part of the bill for me, a single mom with three kids (who I love very much, but am eager to get out of the house and back into the classroom). I want to be clear, the goal is not to just reopen schools ASAP. The goal is to safely open schools ASAP. The bill provides $130 billion to departments of education in each state. In turn, they’re going to give this money to school districts to provide resources that will help reopen schools safely. Some of those resources will help to modify classrooms for safe learning, like additional ventilation and PPE. The bill also focuses on childcare centers for children who are not yet in school. It provides $39 million for childhood development grants and childcare stabilization funds. Also, $40 billion is going to higher education—mostly directed for emergency financial aid for students working to keep themselves in college. |
There’s a lot to this bill that I didn’t cover in this email—from support for restaurant workers, small business programs, ACA subsidies, and so much more—but these are just the building blocks. Money for families, shots in arms, kids in schools, and people back in jobs.
Now, economists predict that we will be able to return to pre-pandemic employment rates in about one year. I know, that’s a long time. But listen, if we didn’t pass this plan, those economists say that it would have taken more than three years to return to pre-pandemic employment rates. So yes, this is an expensive plan, but the cost of doing nothing would be even more expensive, as it would leave our economy in devastation for the next three years. This illustrates how critical it is that Democrats have a majority in the House and Senate, and that President Biden is in the White House to sign this bill.
As always, if you have any questions about the American Rescue Plan, please use this form to send them my way. My team and I will pick out a few questions to answer in an upcoming email.
Thanks for making this possible through your votes, donations, and volunteering last year.
Help is on the way,
Katie
