Today’s Build Back Better Framework

The $1.85 trillion framework announced by President Biden today is a milestone—a signal that lengthy Senate negotiations may soon be over, and that a new era of policymaking is underway.

The Build Back Better agenda, from the American Rescue Plan to today’s framework, deploys the power of government to bring people and private investment off the sidelines—creating jobs, raising wages, and tackling the long-term crises of climate change and racial inequity.

Though the Build Back Better Act is imperfect, it’s a historic step toward the high-care, low-carbon economy of the future—an economy in which we “build America from the bottom up and the middle out, not from the top down, with the trickle-down economics that’s always failed us,” as Biden said in his White House remarks.

By putting front and center increasingly vital sectors—from clean electricity to childcare—we can build an economy with good, green jobs and equitable outcomes.

A Distinctly American Industrial Policy

Over the past few weeks, supply chain shortages have reached crisis level. So, where are the shortages coming from?

 “While there are certainly specific supply chain challenges brought on by the COVID-induced policy decision to freeze and then thaw economies,” Roosevelt’s Todd Tucker writes in the introduction to a new blog series, “the underlying cause is a decades-long faith that private firms could be trusted to make production decisions without public or worker input.”

To better serve Americans and build resilience amid crises, government must expand its industrial policy toolkit and shape markets more directly, Tucker argues.  

Learn more in “A Distinctly American Industrial Policy: An Introduction,” and stay tuned for the latest posts in the series.

The Roosevelt Network’s Emerging Fellows

Every year, selected undergraduate students participate in the Roosevelt Network’s Emerging Fellows program, a yearlong fellowship in which they engage deeply in writing skills training and policy research on an issue of their choosing. Last week, two of this year’s fellows published issue briefs focused on health care—how to ensure equitable access to it, and the role that health care systems play in combating food insecurity. Read more:

• In “Expanding Accessibility and Affordability of Dental Care for People with Disabilities in Texas,” Vivian Tran recommends ways to ease cost and programmatic barriers that prevent people with disabilities from receiving dental care. 

• In “Tackling the SNAP Gap in Georgia: Addressing Food Insecurity and Barriers to Participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,” Aditi Madhusudan explores interventions state agencies can take to help food insecure Georgia residents enroll in nutrition assistance programs. 

For regular updates from the Roosevelt Network, follow them on Twitter and Instagram.