House Passing of Biden ‘Build Back Better’ Bill Bodes Historic Changes, Leaves Major Social Safety-Net Gaps

(Washington, D.C., 11/22/2021) – The US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) recognizes the historic importance of the US House of Representatives’ narrow November 19 victory in passing President Joseph Biden’s Build Back Better “human” infrastructure bill – the second part of the president’s crucial infrastructure package to retool the nation and help the American people. We urge the Senate to approve, and not pare down, the measure before year’s end to give much-needed help and hope, especially to the nation’s vulnerable and growing elderly population.

The social spending bill promises groundbreaking changes in the quality of life of older Americans, particularly after the ravages they have principally endured from the ongoing pandemic.

The legislation, as written now, includes a raft of essential benefits for at-risk seniors:

1. It expands Medicaid Home and Community Based Care (HCBC) program 6 percent, by $150 billion for 10 years (this is in addition to the $12 billion allocation of the American Rescue Plan earlier this year). This means that people can care for their elderly loved ones at home and not send them into nursing homes for long-term care.
2. It requires major employers to give four weeks paid family leave for caregivers of parents, children, spouses, and siblings.
3. It provides increased hearing care.
4. It authorizes Medicare to negotiate prices for a few drugs used mostly by the elderly and notably lowers insulin costs outright.
5. Importantly, it caps Part D out-of-pocket drug costs for Medicare enrollees at $2,000 a year, beginning in 2024.

In addition, the bill includes significant funding for national service money, including climate change provisions:

1. It injects enough funding into the Civilian Climate Corps (CCC) to put an estimated 300,000 volunteers in service.
2. Through its national service provisions, the bill would provide for increased tuition help for two- and four-year higher education students.

The bill, however, falls short in serving American families and citizens on many counts:

1. It cut the original $400 billion expansion of HCBC down to $150 billion.
2. It does not supply room and board allowances for long-term care to family caregivers, for the frail, young and old, as it does for long-term care facilities. This is because many legislators and states want to satisfy the nursing home industry rather than help families keep their loved ones at home.
3. The bill does not provide meaningful funding for those who need personal care assistance to stay at home but have no family members who can stay with them to give them that care.
4. It does not provide for the essential services that make home care possible for millions, including
   1. Home-delivered meals.
   2. Adult daycare
   3. Transportation
   4. Information services, like medical alerts, telehealth, expert advice and content, money management, filling out forms, or bill pay help.
5. It cut back higher education funding from the originally proposed $115 billion to just $40 billion,
   1. Underfunding Pell Grants,
   2. Underfunding Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), and Hispanic and Native American higher education institutions, cutting its proposed aid from $90 billion to $10 billion.
   3. Slashed funding for important drop-out prevention programs
   4. Eliminated entirely tuition-free community colleges
   5. It eliminated entirely Student Debt Relief provisions: (Student debt – now $1.6 trillion – leads all other kinds of debt among Americans, excepting home mortgages, this includes credit card debt, auto-loan debt, and healthcare debt. American students on average graduate from college with a $37,000 debt millstone hung around their necks, and many owe a lot more. This delays our young people’s entry into virtually all of life’s traditional stages, including marriage, childbearing, and homebuying.)

USCMO and its members urge our lawmakers and the American public to get behind Senate passage of President Biden’s Build Back Better bill as it now stands, without further cuts.

We also urge the Biden Administration and American lawmakers to find other avenues for helping vulnerable Americans, including special measures to increase home care aid for the frail both by providing funding for family member caregivers and other in-home providers. A room and board provision for in-home care is also an essential funding priority to strengthen our society.

We recommend that the President and legislative leaders who care about the future of this nation and the wellbeing of its people definitively address student debt relief and help find ways to make clearly unaffordable higher education accessible to our children. This may mean providing specific Pell Grant increases from its roughly $6,400 ceiling per recipient to $10,000.

In addition, the federal government should not abandon the eminently rational goal of tuition-free community colleges. This itself can cut student debt by half.

Again, USCMO and its members congratulate the House on its passage of this human infrastructure bill and call on the Senate to see it through to the President’s desk for signing into law as the second half of their promise to rebuild America’s civil and humane infrastructure.