Rep. Chu Statement on Passage of Build Back Better Act

Washington, DC – Today, the House passed H.R. 5376, the Build Back Better Act, President Biden's $1.75 trillion legislation to invest in families, health care, climate change mitigation, affordable housing, small businesses, immigration, and other infrastructure. Rep. Judy Chu (CA-27), who helped to craft this bill as a member of the House Ways and Means, Budget, and Small Business Committees, issued the following statement:

"Today, House Democrats demonstrated our commitment to passing transformational assistance for the American people. I am proud that, after months of negotiations and compromises from all sides, our hard work resulted in legislation that will mean significant help for struggling families.

"Thanks to the historic investments made in the American Rescue Plan, more Americans are vaccinated and the coronavirus crisis is nearing its end. Now, after over a year and a half of this pandemic, America needs to get back to work! And for that to happen, we need to make investments in the infrastructure that makes work possible, from the roads we drive on to the child care that allows working parents to get to the office. That is what we did today by passing the Build Back Better Act. This bill will put our entire country back on the path to recovery by making some of the largest investments in our families in our country's history. For instance, it caps the amount middle-class families will pay on child care at 7% of their income and ensures comprehensive paid leave so workers don't lose their jobs when taking care of themselves or loved ones. But even as we make it easier for parents to go back to work, families are continuing to struggle with high prices and soaring healthcare costs. That's why this landmark bill makes the Child Tax Credit permanently refundable, ensuring that the neediest families continue to receive this support over the long run, and addresses the skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs by finally allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices on the 10 most expensive medicines. And this bill prepares are economy for the future by addressing climate change and making needed immigration reforms that will prevent communities from losing workers and entrepreneurs they have relied on for years.

"I am especially proud that this bill is completely paid for by ensuring that corporations and the wealthiest few are paying their fair share thanks to a 15% minimum tax on the profits of large corporations and a 1% surcharge on corporate stock buybacks. It also assesses a new surtax of 5% on the richest among us, for those who make over $10 million and an additional 3% on income over $25 million while closing the loophole that allowed certain wealthy taxpayers to avoid paying the 3.8% Medicare tax. And it closes the tax gap by rebuilding the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) capacity to enforce existing tax laws on the wealthy, including by appropriating $45 billion for tax enforcement, $27 billion for operations support, and $1.9 billion for taxpayer services

"While this is an historic and truly transformational legislation, I know that there are still many other priorities that were not included or were pared down. We will not stop fighting for these outstanding priorities, but I remain proud of the House Democrats and President Biden for finding a consensus bill that would make these needed investments to put more Americans back to work and keep more families from sliding into poverty."

Highlights of the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Act are below:

Support for Families and Workers

• Ensures middle-class families pay no more than 7% of income on child care
• Enables states to expand child care access to about 20 million children per year
• Improves Medicaid coverage for home care services for seniors and people with disabilities
• Extends the Child Tax Credit through 2022, making it permanently refundable
• Provides up to 4 weeks of paid family leave with a progressive wage replacement rate
• Increases the limit on the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction from $10,000 to $80,000 for tax years 2021-2030
• Extends the American Rescue Plan's tripling of the Earned Income Tax Credit for 17 million low-income, childless workers

Small Businesses

• Includes $5 billion in investments to improve capital access
• Includes $276 million to authorize the Community Advantage Loan Program, a longtime priority of Rep. Chu's
• Creates a new Direct Lending program at the Small Business Administration to ensure that the most disadvantaged businesses are not left behind
• Establishes new SBA offices of Native American Affairs, Rural Affairs, and Emerging Markets and supports entrepreneurial opportunities for formerly incarcerated individuals

Health Care

• Provides temporary enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace cost-sharing reduction assistance to low-income Americans, essentially closing the Medicaid coverage gap caused by states that have not expanded Medicaid
• Extends ACA subsidies for those who have filed for unemployment through 2023
• Requires Medicaid programs to provide 12 months of continuous coverage to postpartum women
• Provides states with incentives to cover Certified Community Behavioral Health Care Clinics
• Reauthorizes and expands the Health Professions and Opportunity Grant Program to assist states, territories and tribal communities in training local, low-income workers for high demand jobs.
• Permanently authorizes funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP)
• Extends Medicare coverage to include hearing services
• Provides $7 billion to support core public health infrastructure activities and expand the role of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
• Allows Medicare to negotiate prices for the 10 most expensive medicines in the program
• Redesigns the Medicare Part D program to cap senior's out of pocket expenses at $2,000, eliminate the coverage gap
• Caps the monthly price of insulin at $35 for those on Medicare or with private insurance
• Institutes inflation rebates, which will help keep drug companies from exponentially increasing their prices year after year

Climate Change

• Tax incentives to promote clean energy that will lower rooftop solar costs by 30%
• Extends the Investment and Production tax credits for renewable sources of energy
• Expands the electric vehicle tax credit to support union- and American-made vehicles
• Establishes a Civilian Climate Corps with enough funding to employ over 300,000 corpsmembers – legislation introduced by Rep. Chu
• Ensures that rebates to individuals to install water conservation measures in their homes are excluded from taxable income

Housing

• Invests in the construction, rehabilitation, and improvement of more than 1 million affordable homes
• Addresses the capital needs of public housing stock
• Invests in expanding housing vouchers to hundreds of thousands of new families
• Improves the Low Income Housing Tax Credit to expand access to additional affordable housing financing

Immigration

• Includes $100 billion to reduce visa backlogs
• Provides work permits and protection from deportation for undocumented immigrants who have been in the country since before January 1, 2011
• Recaptures about 300,000 unused Family-Sponsored and Employment-Based visas from Fiscal Years 1992-2021
• Recaptures diversity visas lost to the Muslim ban and COVID travel restrictions
• Makes 1 million immigrant children eligible for the Child Tax Credit

Other

• Includes part of the PRIDE Act, introduced by Rep. Chu, to permit the IRS to issue tax refunds beyond the statute of limitation to same-sex couples who were legally married in states before the Supreme Court recognized same-sex marriages nationally
• Makes an $80 billion investment in rebuilding the IRS's core functions of taxpayer services, enforcement, operations, and business systems modernizations