FACTSHEET: HOW DELAYING BUILD BACK BETTER HURTS AMERICANS 

Every Day That Passes in 2022, Americans Are Feeling the Pains of Congress’ Failure to Pass the Build Back Better Act

The expiration of several crucial public investments on January 1, 2022, including the expanded child and earned income tax credits, means that Americans are feeling the economic pressure of Congress’ failure to pass the Build Back Better Act. Once passed, the Act will lower costs, continue important tax cuts, and create jobs for middle-class Americans.

Here’s a rundown of how Americans will be hurting until Congress passes the Build Back Better Act:

Child Care

• Families with infants currently need to pay nearly $16,000 per year on average to cover the true cost of child care, approximately 21% percent of the U.S. median income for a family of three. 
• Without the Build Back Better Act, families will continue paying more than 7% of their income on child care, and affordable care for about 20 million children would not be provided. 
• Affordable child care will continue to be a barrier to work for many parents, causing them to forgo billions in annual income.

Elder Care + Home & Community Based Services (HCBS)

• Without Build Back Better’s investments into services to support the elderly and people living with disabilities in their homes, the U.S. will miss out on 390,000 new jobs each year. 
• Failure to pass Build Back Better’s HCBS provisions would also remove an estimated $4 billion in additional income for workers and their families. 

Universal Pre-K

• The average cost of preschool in the United States is about $8,600 each year, and one in three U.S. children don’t attend pre-k. 
• Without the Build Back Better Act, free pre-k would not be delivered to more than 6 million children per year, and the quality of preschool for many more children would not be increased. 
• Research has shown that universal pre-k would generate economic benefits surpassing the cost of the program within eight years, with economic benefits totalling $304.7 billion by 2050. 

Clean Energy

• The clean energy investments in the Build Back Better Act would set the country on a path of achieving net-zero emissions economy-wide by 2050, according to S&P Global. 
• Experts say the Build Back Better Act is our last best chance to set the United States on course to combat the climate crisis, and failure to pass the bill would seriously imperil our decarbonization efforts. 

Higher Education 

• Without the Build Back Better Act, higher education will continue to be unaffordable to many families, and over 5 million students will not receive a $550 increase to their Pell Grant. 
• Failure to pass Build Back Better also hinders our workforce development, as the Department of Labor will not receive a 50% increase in annual spending on workforce development for each of the next five years. 

Paid Leave

• Without the Build Back Better Act, the nearly 18 million Americans who need paid leave each year will be left having to choose between their income or caring for their loved ones. This includes 9.5 million women and 4.9 million low-income women.
• By having to give up their paychecks to care for a new baby, sick parents or even themselves, lack of federal paid leave would remove $11.5 billion annually from Americans’ paychecks. 

Child Hunger

• 12 million children in the United States are food insecure, lacking consistent access to enough food to live an active, healthy life.
• Without Build Back Better’s investments into nutrition security for children, millions will continue experiencing food insecurity, and 8.7 million children will miss out on free school meals. 
• Failure to pass the Build Back Better Act also denies a $65 per child per month benefit to families of 29 million children to help them purchase food during the summer. 

Housing

• Without Build Back Better, the United States will continue experiencing a dire shortage of affordable housing. There’s currently no state or county in the country where a full-time worker at minimum wage can afford  a two-bedroom apartment. 
• The U.S. has a shortage of 6.8 million rental homes affordable and available to extremely low-income renters, and without Build Back Better’s investments into affordable housing, the shortage will remain or become worse. 

Health Care

• Without the Build Back Better Act, 4 million uninsured people in states that have locked them out of Medicaid will continue to lack health care coverage. 
• Failure to pass the Build Back Better Act takes away an average premium savings of $600 per year for more than 9 million Americans. 
• Older Americans are currently unable to access hearing benefits through their Medicare, and failure to pass Build Back Better would keep them unable to access hearing benefits. 

Addressing Omicron 

• The surge of Omicron variant infections overwhelmed laboratory testing capacity. 
• The Build Back Better Act could provide $1.4 billion to help laboratories increase Covid testing capacity, and enhance capabilities to detect new variant strains. 
• The bill could invest $1.3 billion in vaccine production and procurement, and for the replenishment of vital supplies for the Strategic National Stockpile. 
• The Build Back Better Act could also include over $16 billion meant for nurse training programs, and for state health departments to increase their emergency preparedness and help reduce health care worker shortages. 

Prescription Drugs

• The average cost of prescription drug treatments increased 26.3%, while the annual income for Americans only increased 15.4%.
• Without Build Back Better’s provisions to negotiate lower drug prices, Americans will continue paying excessive amounts for their medication, oftentimes paying three times more than other countries for the same brand name drugs. 
• Over 22 million U.S. residents have diabetes, and without the Build Back Better Act’s $35-a-month cap on insulin, many will continue being unable to afford their life-saving medicine. 

Child Tax Credit + Earned Income Tax Credit 

• Failing to pass the Build Back Better Act is a choice to let millions of children fall back into poverty, after the monthly payments that were provided to nearly 60 million children lifted millions above the poverty line. 
• Without Build Back Better, 17 million low-wage workers, many of whom are essential workers, will not get the expanded Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).