American Rescue Plan Act of 2021
Floor Speech
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Mr. Speaker, this pandemic has been ruthless. With over half a million lives lost, we are a nation in a constant state of mourning. Sadly, we cannot take away the pain and the suffering of our friends, neighbors, and loved ones. But with this seismic legislation, we are delivering much-needed help and relief to millions of our fellow Americans.
In a few minutes, this Chamber will pass and then send to President Biden a monumental piece of legislation that will begin to turn the tide of an unprecedented health and economic crisis.
I want to thank Speaker Pelosi for the confidence that she offered to the Ways and Means Committee as we wrote most of this legislation.
In the 33 years that I have served in this House, I don't know that I will ever cast a more important vote than what we are about to do and of such great consequence in but a few minutes.
I am immensely proud of the work that the Ways and Means Committee members did to make this legislation a reality. We heard the American people, and we went big. We proudly contributed substantial solutions that will strengthen our recovery from this virus and rebuild our economy to work better for all Americans. The Ways and Means Committee was responsible for $1 trillion of this expenditure.
To contain the public health crisis and make health coverage more accessible, we are making the largest expansion of the Affordable Care Act since it was enacted and which the Ways and Means Committee helped to write. We are bringing down costs for jobless Americans saving them thousands of dollars in health insurance costs and more. We will also include assistance for nursing homes that are desperate to contain this virus.
We are going to help those struggling to stay afloat by putting cash in their pockets and simultaneously creating liquidity and demand. For the jobless, we extend Federal unemployment benefits to keep them afloat for the better days that lie ahead.
We have made three key tax credits for low- and middle-income workers and families more generous, more flexible, and more capable of tackling the inequality and concentrated wealth that exists in our country. We already know that a key to our recovery will be giving parents the tools to go back to work even though their previous childcare may have been upended. We will ease their worries by making childcare more accessible and indeed more affordable.
The child tax credit will lift millions out of poverty, and the expanded earned-income tax credit will put money into the pockets of the lowest-income workers.
Mr. Speaker, listen to this following statistic: All in all, there will be an increase in aftertax income for the poorest 20 percent of Americans by increasing their income by 20 percent. That is a staggering achievement. It is a life-changing achievement.
Lastly, we also made a long overdue fix to multiemployer pension programs that will protect hard-earned savings of workers, many of whom have been on the front lines of this crisis. These are people who have played by the rules, served our country in the military, and worked day in and day out with the promise of a secure retirement not to have it pulled from under them. I would remind all that 30 Republicans on two separate occasions have voted for this bill as a standalone measure.
I heard a previous speaker say: This is a bailout. It is a backstop.
In addition, perhaps that individual didn't understand the PBGC, because if we didn't come to the support of these pensions, it would take down the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation which insures all pensions for Americans in the private sector.
I cannot stress enough--these provisions are going to change lives. We are not creating a narrative talking about changing lives, we are going to do it with this legislation.
We are doing the right thing, not only because of what we have been saying that we would do for years--this is the moment--but this legislation has the support of economists from the left, the right, and the center. This is about the power of ideas. But because it is what the American people want also, let me be clear: the American people, regardless of political affiliation, overwhelmingly support this package because they know what is in it is badly needed to get to the other side of the crisis.
I regret that the overwhelming support that I have just described has not been translated into unity in this Chamber. This is bipartisan in America even if it is not bipartisan in this Chamber.
Our colleagues on the other side have deemed workers who saw their entire industries evaporate perhaps unworthy of this moment. They have deemed working parents perhaps unworthy of this moment, and they have deemed the working- and middle-class American family perhaps at this moment unworthy.
I don't understand it.
Instead, there has been a lot of talk about this package being too large and too expensive. But if there was ever a time to go big, this should be it.
Shouldn't helping struggling American families be worth the size of this bill?
I seem to recall that my colleagues found that wealthy Americans and big corporations were worth the size of their tax cut. So why not working- and middle-class families who are facing a health and economic crisis unlike anything the Nation has experienced in more than a century?
I actually have some charts that I think highlight the difference today. We have two comparisons of who benefits from the American Rescue Plan and who benefited in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. This is pretty apparent and pretty obvious to all who might discern in this moment.
As you can see, Mr. Speaker, the benefits that my colleagues across the aisle will oppose today go directly to working-class Americans.
However, with the next chart, Mr. Speaker, you can look at their package, and it was nearly the same size. By the way, they borrowed $2.3 trillion for it. It had overwhelming support from their side of the aisle. But look who the benefits went to. The evidence is overwhelming as to who the benefits went to.
This package is nearly the same size as what they did, but the impact of what we are about to do will be extraordinary.
Multiple reports have highlighted how the tax cuts bill did not, as proponents claimed, grow the economy or indeed--the great hoax--pay for itself. That never happened. Yet they continue to stand behind a law that put the powerful and the wealthy first, and they dismiss what we are about to do today.
Hardworking Americans have been for too long left behind, and that ends today. This bill will save lives and livelihoods. We will help families stay housed, put food on the table, and access affordable healthcare. Most importantly, this package will help families avoid impossible choices.
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Mr. NEAL. And repeatedly, he assures me that he is of modest income and from California.
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Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from New York, my friend, knows that that decision was rendered by a federal judge, not by this Chamber.
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Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, I am glad Mr. Hoyer also pointed out that many of us did support President Bush's rescue package. I voted for it twice.
We met with Hank Paulson, the Secretary of the Treasury, in the Ways and Means Committee library, and he said, ``You have to do this.'' We followed suit and supported it.
It has come to my attention that there is some uncertainty about the effective date of one of the provisions in the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. In section 9706 of the bill, we allow single-employer pension plans to measure their liabilities by using interest rates that are closer to historical norms, rather than the low interest rates that are in effect today in part because of the pandemic. This provision will enable both plans and participants to weather this crisis far better. I'd like to clarify an issue relating to the effective date of this provision. Plans can choose to have the provision apply starting in 2020. In addition, plans can elect to have the provision apply starting in 2022, so that it does not apply until 2022. It also is our intent that plans can elect for the provision to apply starting in 2021. We believe that is the right interpretation of the language of the bill. We want to give plans the maximum flexibility in this regard so that tomorrow's retirees can achieve a secure retirement. My staff has run this interpretation by the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation and they also agree that an election to have the interest rate smoothing apply starting in 2021 is permitted by the language in the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.
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