Congress has been talking about infrastructure and recovery bills for years, from the Green New Deal to The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, they have been looking for a solution to our biggest issues with some success. Recently, Congress has proposed the most ambitious infrastructure bills since the 1933 New Deal. The bill is called the Build Back Better Plan. 

What is this bill going to do? According to CBS the Build Back Better plan has tons of components and parts, most importantly, fighting climate change, cutting prescription drug prices, providing universal pre K, expanding medicare, extending the child tax credit, extending general housing, health care and immigration provisions, and finally extending paid medical leave for families. 

Why would this bill be proposed? Build back better was proposed as a plan to build back from covid and also fix some of the socio economic issues of our generation most notably the climate crisis and high prescription drug prices. 

How will this bill be paid for? According to CBS the plan to pay for this bill includes a 15% minimum tax imposed on corporate profits that large corporations report to shareholders, a 1% surcharge on corporate stock buybacks which is projected to raise 450 billion dollars in revenue for the federal government. 

The bill also calls for a global minimum tax and new surtax on the wealthiest Americans’ income, bolstered IRS enforcement, a 5% tax rate above those with an income over $10 million, and finally another 3% surtax on income over $25 million. The White House estimates that all of these tax increases would increase revenue to around 2 trillion with 230 billion of those dollars coming from our highest earning taxpayers. 

This bill is still a work in progress and will likely fluctuate in cost, effectiveness and even purpose as it wriggles its way through our country’s democratic process. This bill is what our nation needs if it ever expects to recover.