Congresswoman Stansbury Votes to Pass Historic Build Back Better Act to Deliver Billions For New Mexico

WASHINGTON– To build on the nation’s economic recovery and achieve a more sustainable future, U.S. Representative Melanie Stansbury (N.M.-01) voted to pass the historic Build Back Better Act (H.R. 5376) put New Mexicans back to work and transform lives. The bill represents the most significant investment in our communities since the Great Society and New Deal and will touch every American life from our children to our elders. The bill makes urgently needed investments that will cut taxes for New Mexican families, create a universal pre-K and childcare system, make the largest investment in affordable housing in our nation’s history, expand health care, K-12 and trades education, invest in care for our elders, and make the most significant investment in addressing climate change in U.S. history.

Alongside dozens of her colleagues in the House, Congresswoman Stansbury played a critical role in ensuring the Build Back Better Act would pass with strong provisions for New Mexico families by moving together with the bipartisan Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act. The Build Back Better Act now heads to the Senate, where the package will require 51 votes to pass before moving to the President’s desk.

“Today, the House is delivering for New Mexico and our communities by passing the Build Back Better Act,” said Rep. Stansbury. “New Mexicans have met this moment with grit, determination, and heart in their response to the pandemic and economic strains of the last year and a half. The Build Back Better Act invests in our people and good paying jobs with programs that will help all New Mexicans and touch lives from our children to our elders. This bill represents the most significant investment in working families, children, and our planet in generations, putting our country and our communities on a path towards a more just, equitable, and sustainable future.”

The bill invests in a broad range of social and environmental programs that will directly benefit all New Mexicans. This includes investments in good-paying clean energy jobs, affordable housing, childcare and education, healthcare, and climate resilience. The Build Back Better Act will directly support working families by putting money back into the pockets of New Mexicans, bringing down basic costs, lowering inflation, and helping get New Mexicans back to work.  The bill cuts taxes for working families and will ensure that childcare, home care, education, healthcare, and housing are more affordable for years to come.

The Build Back Better Act also includes key provisions on immigration reform, ensures that every worker has the paid leave they need to care for their family, and lowers the cost of prescription drugs. Hundreds of thousands of New Mexicans will benefit from these community investments, including an expansion of the Child Tax Credit, affordable childcare for over 120,000 children statewide, and the creation of thousands of sustainable jobs.

A factsheet of investments in New Mexico from the Build Back Better Act is here. A section-by-section summary of the bill is here. The full text of the Build Back Better Act is available here.

Specific Provisions of the Build Back Better Act cut costs for working families by:

Fighting Climate Change

The Build Back Better Act builds climate resilience. The Build Back Better Act represents the largest-ever investment in addressing climate change and creating clean energy jobs in U.S. history, with over $550 billion in funding to cut carbon emissions and create new jobs. New Mexico has experienced 14 extreme weather events over the last decade, which has cost the state more than $5 billion. By reducing carbon pollution, bolstering community resilience, and strengthening the clean energy economy, the Build Back Better Act will create good-paying jobs, advance environmental justice and save New Mexican families the steep costs of recovery.

Creates the first-ever Civilian Climate Corps. The Build Back Better Act creates a Civilian Climate Corps that will enlist a diverse generation of New Mexicans in helping to conserve our public lands, bolster community resilience, and address the impacts of climate, all while putting good-paying jobs within reach for our communities.

Investing in Community Well-Being

The Build Back Better Act extends the $300 Child Tax Credit to lower taxes for working families. Before Democrats secured the expanded Biden Child Tax Credit in the American Rescue Plan, 14 percent of New Mexican children lived in poverty. This tax cut provides up to $300 per child, per month to over 116,000 children in NM-01 alone. The Build Back Better Act extends this life-changing tax cut and continues our historic progress toward reducing child poverty.

Expands access to childcare for 121,000 young New Mexicans and ensures that no New Mexican family pays more than seven percent of their income on childcare. The average family in New Mexico spends 24% of their income on childcare. Cutting childcare costs will help parents – especially working moms – return to work.

Expands New Mexico’s leadership on universal pre-K nationwide. For the first time ever, The Build Back Better Act invests in a universal Pre-K system for the U.S. that will expand access to free, high-quality pre-K to over 40,000 three and four-year-olds in New Mexico, setting children up for lifelong success and saving their parents thousands of dollars.

Ensures every worker has the paid leave they need to care for their family. The Build Back Better Act invests $200 billion to extend four weeks of paid leave to all workers across the U.S. who need to care for children, parents, and their loved ones.

Provides nutritious food options for children. The Build Back Better Act expands access to free school meals to an additional 44,000 students during the school year and provides over 166,000 students with resources to purchase food over the summer. This is critical for the 1 in 4 children in New Mexico who experience hunger, harming their long-term health and their futures.

Expands access to affordable housing and homeownership. Stable housing and homeownership remain out of reach for so many families.  As our communities are facing an affordable housing and homelessness crisis, the Build Back Better Act makes the single largest investment in housing in U.S. history. It will expand rental assistance for New Mexico renters, while also increasing the supply of high-quality housing through the construction and rehabilitation of over 1 million affordable housing units nationwide. The Build Back Better Act also includes one of the largest investments in down payment assistance in history, enabling more first-generation homebuyers to purchase their first home. In New Mexico, 126,000 renters in New Mexico are rent burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on rent, while first-time homebuyers struggle to afford a home.

Protects immigrant communities from deportation. The Build Back Better Act gives the Secretary of Homeland Security the authority to grant temporary protection and work permits to immigrants who have entered the United States prior to January 1, 2011, if they pass a background check. In New Mexico, an estimated 60,000 undocumented immigrants are essential to communities and the workforce but have been excluded from most federal programs.

Closes the Medicaid gap, expands Medicare to include hearing care, and extends Affordable Care Act premium reductions. The Build Back Better Act will help 42,000 New Mexicans gain coverage and nearly 25,000 families save hundreds on healthcare costs each year in New Mexico – while also making home healthcare for elderly parents or loved ones with disabilities more affordable and accessible.

Directly lowers out-of-pocket prescription drug costs for seniors by finally allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices and placing a $2,000 per year cap on seniors’ prescription drug expenses.This discourages drug companies from abusing laws to prolong their monopolies and encourages investments in research and development of new treatments and caps the costs on many prescriptions needed by our seniors.

Investing in Economic Recovery and Job Programs

The Build Back Better Act increases educational opportunities across a person’s life and beyond high school. To help unlock the opportunities of an education beyond high school, the Build Back Better Act will increase Pell Grant awards by $550 for students at public and private non-profit institutions, supporting the over 33,000 students in New Mexico who rely on financial aid. The Act will also invest in New Mexico’s 29 minority-serving institutions. including the University of New Mexico, and the students they serve, and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), and Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs).

The Build Back Better Act trains America’s workers for the jobs of the present and future. The Build Back Better Act invests in training programs that will prepare New Mexico’s workers for high-quality jobs in fast-growing sectors like public health, childcare, manufacturing, IT, and clean energy. 19 public community colleges in New Mexico will have the opportunity to benefit from grants to develop, deliver, and expand innovative training programs. The bill also invests in rural economic development, minority-owned businesses, and trades and technical programs that will grow New Mexico’s economy and create opportunities for our communities.