Bennet Highlights Historic Funding for Colorado Families, Clean Energy in the Build Back Better Framework

Press Release

Today, Colorado U.S. Senator Michael Bennet highlighted a new fact sheet from the White House that shows how President Joe Biden's Build Back Better framework will invest in Colorado families and workers and support efforts to advance clean energy and combat climate change.

"President Biden's Build Back Better agenda will make long-overdue investments in Colorado's families and infrastructure," said Bennet. "After years of spending trillions of dollars on two wars in the Middle East and tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, we will finally make critical investments in Coloradans and their future. We'll help families cover costs from child care to healthy food, advance our state's leadership on clean energy, take steps to address climate change, and build resilience in our rural communities. I urge my colleagues to come together to make this historic investment for Colorado and the American people."

The Build Back Better framework includes many Bennet-championed provisions that will help make child care, home care, education, health care, and housing more affordable for Coloradans. The framework will also create good-paying jobs in Colorado that will help our state deploy more clean energy and advance the United States as a leader in global innovation and 21st century clean energy manufacturing.

The full fact sheet from the White House is available HERE. Highlights are available below.

Supporting Colorado Families and Workers

According to the White House, 11% of children under the age of 18 in Colorado lived in poverty prior to the pandemic. The Build Back Better framework extends for one year the current expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) for more than 35 million American households, including over 1 million kids in Colorado, with monthly payments for households earning up to $150,000 per year. It makes refundability of the CTC permanent so that the poorest families in America can continue to receive the benefit. This will continue the largest one-year reduction in child poverty in history. Bennet authored the bill to expand the CTC, which Biden signed into law for one year in the American Rescue Plan Act.

The framework will also extend the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) expansion to support more than 293,000 low-paid workers without children in Colorado. Bennet authored the bill to expand the EITC with U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), which Biden signed into law for one year with the American Rescue Plan Act.

The average annual cost of a child care center for a toddler in Colorado is $14,300 according to the White House, meaning that a family with two young children would on average spend 14% of their income on child care for one year. Bennet worked with Senate leadership to ensure that the Build Back Better framework will help Colorado provide access to child care for more than 342,300 additional young children per year and ensure these families pay no more than 7% of their income on high-quality child care.

17% of children in Colorado live in food insecure households according to the White House, which will harm their long-term health and ability to succeed in school. The Build Back Better framework will ensure that the nutritional needs of Colorado's children are met by expanding access to free school meals to an additional 138,000 students during the school year and providing 356,100 students with resources to purchase food over the summer. Bennet worked with Agriculture Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow to make sure that the 1 in 6 children in Colorado who lack adequate nutrition have access to healthy meals.

Advancing Clean Energy and Combating Climate Change

From 2010 to 2020, Colorado experienced 30 extreme weather events fueled by climate change, costing up to $50 billion in damages, according to the White House. The Build Back Better framework is an important step forward in helping the United States cut climate pollution and advance clean energy in a way that creates good-paying union jobs, grows clean domestic industries, and advances environmental justice.

The framework includes ten-year expanded tax credits for utility-scale and residential clean energy, transmission and storage, and clean passenger and commercial vehicles, reflecting the Clean Energy for America Act, which Bennet co-sponsored and helped advance through the U.S. Senate Finance Committee. Based on provisions Bennet championed, these credits will now be accessible to rural electric cooperatives, public power companies, and tribal governments.

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