Florida’s Rubio, Scott question costs in Biden’s American Family Plan

(The Center Square) – All eyes are on back-and-forth talks between the Biden administration and Congressional Republican leaders in finding consensus on an infrastructure package that has been scaled back from $2.23 trillion to $1 trillion.

But Florida U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott are also gearing up for the next big battle – beating back an array of objectionable provisions in Biden’s proposed $1.8 trillion American Families Plan.

Unveiled before an April 28 joint session of Congress, the plan sets forth $1 billion in childcare, universal pre-K for all 3-4 year-olds, free community college and paid family/medical leave initiatives and offers $800 million in tax cuts for families with children, including an “historic expansion” of the child tax credit which would be allocated monthly.

The American Families Plan extends through 2025 the American Rescue Plan’s Child Tax Credit increases to $3,000 per child 6-years and older and $3,600 per child younger than 6. Under the plan, the top individual tax rate for those earning more than $400,000 annually would increase, as would capital gains taxes.

“This extension will benefit 3.833 million children in Florida, including 2.297 millions children of color,” the White House states. “This proposal is estimated to lift 275,000 children out of poverty in Florida and reduce child poverty in the state by 38 percent.”

But Rubio said extending the expired child tax credit under the 2017 Tax Cuts & Jobs Act, as he and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, proposed in a failed measure, would have helped families more.

“But Democrats chose the alternative: simply handing out cash to parents, including ones already on welfare or in households where nobody is working,” Rubio said in a statement, calling Biden’s plan “a return to the failed welfare system of the 1990s.”

Scott in a statement urged Biden to “tell the truth about his plans to raise taxes on American families to pay for his massive spending proposals.”

“Even if Biden got to wave his liberal wand and spend the $6 trillion” in spending his administration has proposed within in first 100 days, “we’d still fall $2.5 TRILLION short in paying for his reckless spending plans,” Scott said.

According to the White House, this is how the American Families Plan would affect Florida:

Higher Education: The proposal provides two years of free community college. In Florida, more than 800,000 are enrolled in 28 community colleges, about 300,000 full-time. The average cost of a two-year degree in Florida is $3,238 per year.

The plan also increasers maximum Pell Grant awards by approximately $1,400. On average, 474,450 Florida postsecondary students rely on Pell Grants.

Universal Pre-School: All but six states offer voluntary universal pre-K, including Florida, which is one of only two states without enrollment-cap based funding restrictions in place.

Yet less than half of Florida’s 3-4 year olds attend pre-K; only 222,275 of 465,130 eligible 3-4-year-old Floridians are enrolled in publicly-funded pre-schools this year, according to the White House.

Teacher retention/recruitment: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has spearheaded a two-year effort to raise state teachers’ salaries from the bottom five to the top five with lawmakers approving another $550 million in next year’s budget to raise minimum teacher salaries to $47,500 statewide. Nevertheless, Florida is 13% below teacher recruitment goals.

The plan allocates $9 billion for states to address anticipated shortages in high-need areas such as special education and bilingual education with emphasis one recruiting minorities.

According to the White House, just 33% of Florida teachers are “people of color” while “students of color” make up 62% of the state’s 2.9 million K-12 population.

Child care: The average annual cost of child care for a toddler in Florida is $8,618, more than 10% of an average Florida family’s income, according to the White House.

The plan would enable low- and middle-income families to pay no more than 7% of income on child care, allowing parents of an estimated 487,900 Florida children to enroll.

Child nutrition: According to the White House, 16 percent of Florida children live in “food insecure households” and 30% are obese. The plan expands access to free school meals to an additional 1.139 million Florida students and provides up to 2 million “with resources to purchase food over the summer.”

Heath insurance costs: Florida leads the nation in enrollment in the health insurance exchange offered under the Affordable Care Act. More than 2,120,350 Floridians were enrolled in early April.

The American Rescue Plan provided two years of lower exchange premiums. The ‘American Families Plan’ makes those reductions permanent, saving an estimated 589,100 Floridians hundreds in premiums annually.

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