On Thursday, the Biden administration released a fact sheet on the American Families Plan. The White House calls it “an investment in our children and our families — helping families cover the basic expenses that so many struggle with now, lowering health insurance premiums, and continuing the American Rescue Plan’s historic reductions in child poverty.”
This plan is all about expanding the public-education system, unemployment insurance, and involving government in childcare. The Biden administration claims that the American Families Plan will provide at least four years of “free” education, direct support to children and families, and offer relief to hundreds of millions of Americans.
While this might all sound good to many people, one should keep in mind that every “free” government program that has ever been implemented has come with a price tag, including Biden’s new boondoggle.
Biden’s plan for the government to offer an additional four years of “free education” will cost $200 billion dollars for free universal pre-school for three- and four-year-olds, $109 billion for two years of community college, and over $80 billion in Pell Grant investments. An additional $62 billion will be granted to serve students in disadvantaged communities.
As if this weren’t enough, $9 billion will be utilized to train, equip, and “diversify” teachers. Biden’s focus on Critical Race Theory and equity will most likely be included in this aspect of the plan.
Under the American Families Plan, the public-education system ─ which is already failing students in favor of identity politics ─ will be receiving more government support to indoctrinate as many children as possible at younger ages. In some states, kindergarten isn’t even required, but this plan overlooks that fact to pull three- and four-year-olds into the system at no up-front charge to parents.
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This plan also hopes to transform college into yet another government-run institution. It will deliver “free community college and other postsecondary education investments.” The price tag of this “free” schooling is not listed. But there will be an additional $1,400 per person offered through the Pell Grant, and a focus on giving DREAMers access to these funds.
A $62 billion grant program will be spent to increase the rate of college completion. How this will be specifically achieved is unclear. One may wonder if students who do not complete their degree programs will be required to pay back money spent on their education, or if they will be penalized in other ways.
Teachers are also not forgotten in this expensive government plan. $9 billion will be used to address shortages in the number of “teachers of color,” and “boost teacher diversity.” Critical Race Theory won’t just be a part of the curriculum being taught to students; it will be used to determine who teaches the curriculum.
The plan will spend $225 billion dollars to subsidize childcare so parents can leave their children to government-funded, government-approved babysitters while they go to work. But at least the American Families Plan does delegate $64 billion for paid leave so families can welcome new additions to their homes before being encouraged to re-enter the workforce.
Families will see an increase in EBT access and free-lunch programs, as well as programs to “ensure the nutritional needs of families are met.” This leads to the question of what the government considers nutritious food, seeing as how Congress once declared that pizza can be considered a vegetable in order to meet nutrition regulations placed on school lunches.
Echoing Democrat Party talking points, the plan declares that “Health care should be a right, not a privilege.” Using this philosophy, it extends the expanded ObamaCare tax credits with $200 billion dollars, extends the Child Tax Credit increases of the American Rescue Plan through 2025, and makes the Earned Income Tax Credit for childless workers permanent. How this last act helps American families raise their children without costing them anything is not addressed.
As if these expansions to big government programs weren’t enough, Biden’s American Families Plan also grants the IRS authority to regulate who prepares tax returns. This small addition has nothing to do with American families, but plenty to do with increased government involvement in the lives of Americans.
To finalize the proposed spending, increased tax rates on the wealthy are added by restoring the top tax bracket to what it was before 2017. This destroys all the economic growth that was created before the pandemic, and as economist Thomas Sowell said, it “penalizes those who are producing wealth in order to subsidize those who are only consuming it.”
The American Families Plan is government overreach that will drive America further into socialism. It expands big government and government spending, while American families will very well be footing the bill for generations to come.
