You might have heard about President Joe Biden's plans for subsidized child care, universal pre-kindergarten, and extended child tax credits.

The same goes for his proposed $555 billion to address climate change, $150 billion to boost affordable housing, and the billions more for home caregiving.

Each is among the most expensive and most-discussed components of Biden's package of social services programs he proposed Thursday. But tucked inside the president's new scaled-back $1.85 trillion framework – the House bill is still 1,684 pages despite major cuts – are several lesser-known items. These range from significant funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities and high-speed rail, to an emphasis on improved nutrition for school lunches.

What's in Biden's bill?: What's in Biden's latest budget offer: Climate programs and universal preschool, but no paid leave

Here are some other proposals in Biden's proposed package, which he is pushing for Democratic lawmakers to unite behind.

Big boost for HBCUs

Biden's revamped framework includes $10 billion for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges and Universities, and other minority-serving institutions – one of the few funding increases over what was proposed in the president's original $3.5 trillion reconciliation package.

The bill sets aside $3 billion for grants to support research and development infrastructure at such institutions. There's also $6 billion in Title III and Title V federal aid for HBCUs, TCUs, and minority-serving institutions over the next five years, which would be five times the amount these schools currently receive from these funding streams, according to the White House.

The significant boost for HBCUs and other minority-serving institutions comes as Biden faces sharp criticism from leaders of Black colleges and universities after proposing about $2 billion for HBCUs in his initial plan.

Harry Williams, president, and CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, called the HBCU expansion "a testament" to the advocacy, the importance of HBCU institutions, and the relationships with the Biden administration and Congress.

Other HBCU funding includes $1 billion proposed for improvements of agricultural facilities at HBCUs that were established by 1890 land grants and $100 million for scholarships for students pursuing agricultural careers at these schools.

$10 billion for high-speed rail

Biden's scaled-back plan would aim to accelerate the development of high-speed rail corridors around the country by providing $10 billion in grant funding to states.

The money would have to be used on projects connecting passenger trains between cities (think Los Angeles to San Francisco or Dallas to Houston).

Former President Barack Obama made intercity, high-speed passenger rail a top priority during his administration, but the effort generally languished as states (which determine and oversee such projects) faced various obstacles such as funding shortfalls and construction delays.

Biden, who as a senator routinely rode Amtrak between his home state of Delaware and Capitol Hill, has touted the expansion of passenger rail as a way to reduce carbon emissions from cars.

School lunches and nutrition

Biden's bill would expand free meals at public schools to an additional 8.7 million low-income students during the school year under the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act.

More than 30 million students currently qualify for the program.

It would also provide a benefit of $65 per child per month for low-income families to purchase meals during the summer. The White House estimated the summer benefit would apply to 29 million children.

The bill proposes $250 million for grants and incentives to states that improve the nutritional quality of school meals and reduce the availability of unhealthy foods during the school year. There's also $30 million for grants to support "scratch cooking" in which schools prepare their own meals rather than pre-assembled or processed foods. This includes funds for training, assistance and equipment. Both pools of funds were reduced significantly from Biden's original $3.5 trillion spending plan.

Federal aid to DACA students

Biden's bill would expand eligibility of federal student aid to undocumented students who were brought to the U.S. as minors.

As part of the Biden administration's push to expand Pell grants, eligibility would extend to recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. Biden also wants to increase the maximum size of Pell grants, which help low-income students pay for school.

The federal DACA program, created in 2012 under Obama, allows nearly 650,000 young, undocumented children to live and work without fear of deportation. The children are often referred to as "Dreamers," based on the DREAM Act, legislation proposed but never passed in Congress.

"The package further unlocks the door to opportunity by expanding Pell Grant eligibility to students with DACA and Temporary Protected Status," said Sameer Gadkaree, president and CEO of the Institute for College Access & Success.

However, caving to pushback from Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Biden eliminated tuition-free community college from his bill. The president also did not include a pathway to citizen for undocumented immigrants in his framework, like many advocates wanted, instead proposing $100 billion for immigration enhancements.

Money for NASA to track climate change

The bill reaffirms NASA’s role as the nation’s lead institution tracking the effect of climate change on the planet.

The proposal includes:

*$115 million to measure the planet’s warming, including $85 million for research and development of instruments and $30 million to analyze data.

*$25 million to improve ways of fighting wildfires that have grown larger and more intense – especially in the West – as climate change has expanded.

*$225 million in aeronautics research to develop “sustainable aviation,” which aims to reduce the carbon footprint air travel contributes to the atmosphere.

More IRS agents

One of the ways Biden wants to pay for his proposal is to beef up IRS enforcement, especially on the richest Americans. The plan would include nearly $45 billion over 10 years to hire thousands of agents to go after tax cheats, particularly wealthy ones.

By adding more agents, especially those “trained to pursue wealthy evaders,” the president believes the government can recoup as much as $400 billion in unpaid taxes.

Budget cuts over the past decade has forced the IRS to cut back audits by 60% on people making more than $1 million a year, according to the White House.

“The result of a gutted IRS is a two-tiered tax system, where wage earners pay all the taxes they owe, but the top 1 percent evades over $160 billion per year in taxes,” according to a release from the White House.

Republicans, who helped winnow the agency when they ran Congress, oppose any plan that adds thousands more agents, whom they say will end up going after middle-class taxpayers.

“Democrats want to hire 80,000 new IRS agents so they can go through all your personal financial information – what you spend your money on, and what income you take in,” Sen. Thom Tillis R-N.C., said on the Senate floor Thursday. “Using that information, the IRS will then try to squeeze out any additional money they can from you.”

Stopping drilling in ANWR

Oil and gas drilling leases for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would be canceled under the House bill.

The issue of drilling in the pristine reserve has been a battle line between environmentalists who view ANWR as one of the planet’s last frontiers for Polar Bears and other endangered wildlife, and energy firms who want to drill into its untapped resources. Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski had pushed for the leases which had been granted under former President Donald Trump.

ANWR spans 19.3 million acres, an area of land roughly equal in size to South Carolina, in northeast Alaska. In 1980, Congress designated more than 8 million acres within ANWR as federal wilderness while also setting aside the 1.57-million-acre Coastal Plain for petroleum exploration and potential future development.

The House bill based off Biden's plan would go even further by preventing the Interior Department from issuing any oil or gas leases on the Outer Continental Shelf. That would reverse a Trump plan announced in 2018 to open up 90% of the areas off the U.S. coast to oil and gas exploration in what would have been the largest single expansion of off-shore drilling activity ever proposed.

Environmentalists denounced Trump’s proposal at the time, saying it would not only disturb maritime ecosystems but also increase the supply and use of fossil fuels that contribute to climate change while the president said it would help the country become energy independent.

Source: Joey Garrison and Ledyard King/UsaToday.com

Date Posted: Saturday, October 30th, 2021 , Total Page Views: 2363