Ladies and gentlemen, the day very few of you have been waiting for might finally be here.
After weeks of back and forth, President Biden announced a $1.75 trillion Build Back Better framework on Thursday, meaning the only thing left to do is secure broad Capitol Hill support — perhaps the most daunting task of all. If you ask Biden, though, apparently "everybody's" already on board (but we're not sure everyone's on that same page).
So what's inside? The framework allocates $400 billion toward child care and preschool, $555 billion toward clean energy and climate investments, $150 billion to expand affordable housing, and $200 billion toward the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Credit, among other investments. Notably, per CNN, the framework does not include expanding Medicare coverage to include vision or dental — a key provision for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Paid family leave and prescription drug pricing reform were also cut, reports The New York Times and The Washington Post.
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A senior administration official on Thursday called the plan — which is a signficant roll back from an initially proposed topline number of $3.5 trillion dollars — the "most transformative investment in children and caregiving in generations, the largest effort to combat climate change in history, a historic tax cut for tens of millions of middle-class families and the biggest expansion of affordable health care in a decade," per CNN.
Despite the legislation's storied history, the White House remains confident this new proposal will have enough support to pass both chambers of Congress at long last, per the Post. Now, the president will present the plan in a private meeting with House Democrats before then unveiling it to the public Thursday afternoon.
