Vox

It would help with child-raising expenses, from birth to college

The megabill would have the federal government do far more to support parents, providing money or establishing new programs related to child care, pre-K, community college, and more.

For all of these, the exact details about how they will work remain to be determined and are subject to change, but Democrats have indicated they would spend large sums of money on each of these priorities:

Paid leave: Currently, the federal government does not guarantee paid leave for working parents. Some states require it, and some employers voluntarily offer it — but small businesses and employers with few high-wage workers are less likely to do so. So the megabill would create a national paid leave program, in which the government would pay part of a worker’s salary for up to 12 weeks of leave (for new parents or other issues, such as serious illness). As Matt Yglesias wrote earlier this year, under Biden’s plan the government’s share of these leave payments would be capped at $4,000 a month, so in practice, this would be most useful for low-wage workers.

Child care subsidies: The bill would also try to help low- and middle-income families with the cost of child care. Basically, if you earn below a certain amount, the federal government would help foot the bill for your child care — subsidizing it so that costs won’t exceed a certain percentage of your income. Many details remain to be worked out here, particularly Biden’s promise that the resulting child care will be “high quality,” which seems more challenging to implement.

Funding pre-K: In much of the US, public schooling starts at age 5, with kindergarten, and many parents of 3- and 4-year-olds don’t have a government-funded option for pre-K. The bill would try to change this, allotting hundreds of millions of dollars for preschool expansion. This implementation would again have to happen at the state and local levels.

Summer lunches for low-income children: Currently, low-income children can get free lunch at school, and Democrats want to extend that benefit to cover the summer when school is out — another anti-poverty measure.

Free community college: The bill would fund Biden’s plan to cover two years of free community college to those who want it.

Expanded Pell grants: Low-income students who rely on Pell grants to help pay for college would get extra help under this bill.

It’s a health care bill, especially for seniors

Even after Obamacare extended health insurance to millions more Americans, major gaps in the US’s system and the benefits it provides remain — gaps that frequently expose Americans to burdensome and even ruinous expenses. This year’s megabill is expected to fill several of those gaps:

Medicare expansion to cover dental, vision, and hearing: The megabill would expand Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing benefits (which are mostly or entirely not covered in standard Medicare plans), meaning it could be a huge help to seniors who incur those expenses. The budget resolution also would allow for lowering the eligibility age for Medicare, but it is unclear at this point whether this will make it into the eventual bill.

Medicare drug price negotiation: Democrats also plan to empower Medicare to negotiate with the federal government on prescription drug pricing, something that would drive prices down for seniors. It has the added benefit of driving costs down for the federal government, which would help pay for the megabill’s new spending.

Long-term care: Democrats also hope to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on long-term care for seniors and people with disabilities who need daily assistance. As Jonathan Cohn writes, more than 800,000 Americans are on waiting lists for home and community-based care services right now, due to lack of funding.

Medicaid expansion: There are still 12 states that have not implemented Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid to more low-income people, and Democrats have committed to ensuring they get coverage in this bill — though they’re still debating how, exactly, to do it.

Affordable Care Act subsidies: Finally, Democrats also intend to make temporary, pandemic-inspired expansions in subsidies for people getting health care on Obamacare’s individual marketplaces permanent.

It’s a climate, housing, and immigration bill — for now, at least

Democrats are also using this bill as the vehicle for their climate change agenda. The catch is that the bill will have to win the approval of coal-state Sen. Joe Manchin, so don’t expect a frontal assault on fossil fuels. But Democrats remain hopeful that measures to support clean energy can win Manchin over.

Current plans are to include:

A clean electricity payment program: The marquee climate policy in this bill would be a call for 80 percent of the US’s electricity to be generated by clean sources by 2030, according to E&E News. The bill likely can’t directly mandate this due to restrictions in the reconciliation process. But it will try to achieve it by making payments to utilities that rely on clean energy, while fining those that aren’t making progress toward reducing carbon emissions, as my colleague Rebecca Leber recently explained. Manchin will play a big role in crafting this, as he chairs the key Senate committee that will be involved.

Clean energy tax incentives and research money: Renewable energy industries like wind and solar would get big tax breaks, and a “clean energy accelerator” would be funded to support new technologies.

Polluter import fee and methane polluter fee: The idea for an outright “carbon tax” is long dead, but Democrats have proposed putting tariffs on imported goods from countries with weaker restrictions on carbon emissions, and putting a price on methane emissions (which heavily contribute to climate change).

Other issues the bill may tackle:

Housing: Democrats plan to allot hundreds of billions of dollars more for affordable housing, with money going to rental assistance and homeownership initiatives, as well as the “creation and preservation of affordable housing.”

Immigration: Finally, though details remain scarce, Democrats are currently saying they intend to include in the megabill a path to legal status for some undocumented immigrants. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) told NBC News last month this would apply to some of each of the following categories: those who came here as children, farmworkers, people with Temporary Protected Status, and essential workers.

Mods, I realize this post may be pushing the limit, but this bill is expected to be the largest expansion to the American social welfare since LBJ's Great Society.

Men are over-represented amongst the poorest in society, and key provisions like subsidized housing, and paid paternity leave could dramatically improve male welfare.