By Rachel Max ’24 Build Back Better is a bill first introduced in September of 2021, which has been stalling in the U.S. Senate the past few months. The bill requests 1.75 trillion dollars to invest in creating a brighter future by rebuilding the infrastructure of many systems. The bill aims to combat climate change, improve the economy, and extend health care to more citizens. The bill also includes erasing student debts and establishing a system to prevent more from accruing, offering more free education for children, and creating new jobs and low-income houses, amongst other things.
While this would be a costly endeavor, it would help many and eventually show profitable results. As President Biden, who has been heavily pushing for this bill to be passed, put it, “The Build Back Better framework will set the U.S. on a course to meet our climate targets, create millions of good-paying jobs and grow our economy from the bottom up and the middle out.” “I think that Build Back Better is a crucial piece of legislation, both for the country and the world at large. The climate crisis is too big an issue for us to drag our feet on,” said 11th grader Daniel Shapiro. However, the bill has been locked in the Senate over the past few months. A big issue has been the Republican opposition. As of now, there is not a single Republican in favor of this bill. Democrats are having their own problems with the bill as well. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia has many concerns such as the bill increasing the already high inflation rate as well as Democrats’ shifting focus to an election reform bill. This bill might cause a lot more national debt than we already have. While the programs sound good, this could bring more problems to an already bad economy,” said junior Sophia Khodorkovsky. “I think the Build Back Better bill has the potential to be great, but it’s been watered down so much by Senators Manchin and Sinema and the corporate lobbyist interests that it’s now not even really helping much at this point,” said 9th grader Shayne Cytrynbaum. “And now they’re saying they may not even support it, which is just another huge disappointment. I think President Biden and the Democrats need to be more unapologetic in their goals as they cannot let Manchin and Sinema think they can push everyone around, and while some compromise is necessary to get this bill passed, they can’t forget the bill’s progressive goals in the process.”
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