In a memo to Democratic Senators, the Senate Budget Committee has released details of a $3.5 trillion FY2022 budget resolution, sometimes referred to as a budget blueprint. The resolution calls for $3.5 trillion in long-term investments in human infrastructure to be fully offset by a combination of new tax revenues, health care savings, and long-term economic growth. In addition, the resolution would prohibit new taxes on families making less than $400,000 per year, and on small businesses and family farms.
The budget resolution provides instructions to various Senate committees to provide funding for different projects.
With regards to taxes, the budget resolution will provide the Finance Committee with an instruction that allows for:
- $1.8 trillion in investments for working families, the elderly and the environment;
- A “historic” tax cut for Americans making less than $400,000 a year;
- Ensuring that the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share of taxes; and
- Hundreds of billions in additional savings by lowering the price of prescription drugs.
In order to give the Senate Finance Committee the flexibility it needs to accomplish these goals, the text of the budget resolution will provide the Finance Committee with an instruction to reduce the deficit by a nominal amount of $1 billion over ten years.
The budget resolution calls for the following investments:
- Paid Family and Medical Leave
- ACA expansion extension and filling the Medicaid Coverage Gap
- Expanding Medicare to include dental, vision, hearing benefits and lowering the eligibility age
- Addressing health care provider shortages (Graduate Medical Education)
- Child Tax Credit/EITC/CDCTC extension
- Long-term care for seniors and persons with disabilities (HCBS)
- Clean energy, manufacturing, and transportation tax incentives
- Pro-worker incentives and worker support
- Health equity (maternal, behavioral, and racial justice health investments)
- Housing incentives
- SALT cap relief
- Other investments within the jurisdiction of the Finance Committee
And the resolution calls for the following offsets:
- Corporate and international tax reform
- Tax fairness for high-income individuals
- IRS tax enforcement
- Health care savings
- Carbon Polluter Import Fee
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that the Senate will take up the budget resolution once it finishes voting on the $1 trillion infrastructure bill and will not take its August recess until it has passed both the infrastructure bill and the budget resolution.
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