The 2022 Elections: An Infrastructure for Our Future

At the federal level, the 2022 elections will reflect on the accomplishments of the 117th Congress and set the agenda for the 118thCongress. President Biden set forth a transformative agenda for children and families for the 117th Congress to develop a 21st century public infrastructure for society’s prosperity and for future generations of Americans – physical, environmental, and human.

Congress enacted the American Rescue Plan Act to advance this agenda, including transformational, but time-limited, investments in children. Congress then enacted the Infrastructure Investment Act and the Inflation Reduction Act – providing investments in the physical and environmental parts of that infrastructure. The task ahead for child and family advocates is to ensure the next Congress completes the job by investing in the most important part of the public infrastructure – that which ensures all children have the opportunity to succeed. [see the resources section for different statements calling for completing this agenda]

President Biden and champions in Congress already have spelled out the infrastructure the federal government must provide for the next generation and started to do so in the American Rescue Plan Act.

It will be up to the next Congress to making permanent those investments – an expanded and refundable child tax credit, financing that makes high quality child care and preschool available and affordable to all families, paid family leave, home-and-community-based services for children (and adults) with special health care needs, enhanced perinatal health care to reduce maternal and infant mortality, a community health workforce, increased funding for public education and community schools with a focus upon Title I and IDEA, and provisions to ensure post-secondary education is affordable to all. [See other pages on this website for descriptions of these proposals and actions]

Many different champions in Congress have developed detailed legislative proposals for each and have identified funding sources to achieve them. Many different child and family practice, research, and policy organizations have both helped refine these proposals and established the foundation for their successful implementation. While all individual aspects of this agenda are important in their own right, what makes them most effective and truly transformational is their collective impact.

Child and family policy advocates are now in the position to mobilize a public mandate to achieve these not as piecemeal efforts, but as a comprehensive response. Our children and grandchildren, and the children and grandchildren to come, deserve no less. [see other pages on this website for analysis of the value and returns-on-investment from these actions]

The 117th Congress took major steps in initiating actions on this infrastructure but fell just short of making many of its provisions permanent. President Biden and champions in Congress are doing their job. Now, it is up to us to create that public mandate and ensure that sufficient members of Congress are elected to complete the task. 

This means child and family policy advocates – across health, education, early care, economic security, and equal opportunity – work together both on securing the investments and establishing the means for financing them. Ultimately, Congress identified sufficient sources for revenue. Through paring back on tax cuts for the highest income and wealthiest in society established in the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act, there is sufficient revenue to provide financing for a large share of these cuts.

Candidates need to know there is a public mandate to do so. Our voices and votes are key to creating that mandate. [stay tuned for additional website materials on sources of revenue and on taking action to create a mandate].