MEMO: Build Back Better Will Significantly Reduce Costs for Families

*** Senior Sierra Club policy staff and leadership, along with grassroots volunteers, are available to discuss the urgent need for Congress to pass the Build Back Better Act. ***

As the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics prepares to release its Consumer Price Index data for November on Friday, the Senate is slated to vote soon on President Biden’s Build Back Better Act, a bill that will greatly reduce costs for struggling families in communities across the country.

At a time when inflation is causing economic hardship for working families, the Build Back Better Act will help the average person save money on essential expenses. The bill would reduce the costs of healthcare, prescription drugs, child care, and eldercare; create free universal access to what is currently expensive preschool education; cut utility bills by making clean electricity cheaper; and provide more affordable clean transit options. 

One recent study shows that the Build Back Better Act will save the average family at least $7,400 per year, or $15,000 for single-parent households. 

MAJOR COST SAVINGS FOR AMERICAN FAMILIES

As noted in a Sierra Club factsheet, the Build Back Better Act:

• Helps the average family save $500 each year in utility bills.

• Makes it $7,000 cheaper on average to install solar panels on rooftops.

• Offers low-income communities, Indigenous communities, churches, hospitals, schools, local governments, and other nonprofits the opportunity to install wind and solar power for 30-50 percent less than the normal cost.

• Enables working- and middle-class families to save up to $8,000 while weatherizing their homes to reduce utility bills and pollution.

• Makes it up to $10,000 cheaper to convert a home from fossil fuel-based to electricity-based heating and cooling to slash air and climate pollution.

• Makes affordable public transit options more accessible to people who live in affordable housing.

• Cuts the price of an electric vehicle by $12,500 for working- and middle-class families while supporting electric vehicle manufacturing at unionized U.S. factories.

• Cuts the price of an electric bike by up to $900 for working- and middle-class families while boosting the benefits that employers offer for biking to work.

According to data compiled by Invest In America, the Build Back Better Act:

• Lowers child care costs, which could increase the lifetime earnings for women with children by nearly $100,000. 

• Lowers the cost of long-term care, expanding access to affordable home care to hundreds of thousands of people. 

• Lowers health care costs and premiums for those buying coverage through the ACA by extending the American Rescue Plan’s cost saving premium tax credits and closing the Medicaid gap for low-income Americans.

• Saves seniors major expenses by adding hearing coverage to Medicare.

• Lowers prescription drug costs for Americans by letting Medicare negotiate drug prices, so consumers are no longer at the whim of pharmaceutical companies.

• Lowers taxes for low-and-moderate-income workers by extending the American Rescue Plan’s Earned Income Tax Credit to millions. 

• Lowers education costs by expanding Pell grants.

• Gives a major economic boost to young families that will save tens of thousands of dollars by finally making universal preschool access for 3 and 4 year olds a reality across the nation.

• Lower housing costs by creating more than 1 million new affordable homes in rural and urban areas. 

###