Source: United States Senator for Colorado Michael Bennet
Listen to the Full Interview HERE
Washington, D.C. — Last week, Colorado U.S. Senator Michael Bennet joined National Public Radio’s Steve Inskeep to discuss his town hall and how the Build Back Better Act will make historic investments in American families, rural communities, National Forests, and clean energy innovation.
The Build Back Better Act passed out of the U.S. House of Representatives and includes an extension of the enhanced Child Tax Credit as well as a $54 billion investment in forestry and conservation to address climate change. Bennet continues to work in the Senate to ensure these provisions, and others, are included in the final version of the bill.
Bennet on extending the expanded Child Tax Credit and making the benefit permanently available to 27 million kids who were previously left out:
“…We could cut childhood poverty almost in half in this country by making three changes to the child tax credit that Sherrod Brown and Cory Booker and Kamala Harris and I — [and] Reverend Warnock now — have proposed. And it is now contained in the negotiated [Build Back Better] bill. The White House has been able to make the full refundability of that tax credit permanent, which means that [for] forever, millions of the poorest kids in this country are going to have the benefit of the tax credit. But the enhanced tax credit is only going to last for a year. And we’re going to have to fight to make it permanent.”
Bennet on making investments to fight climate change in Build Back Better and supporting communities as America transitions to a clean energy economy:
“I have long believed that unless we have meaningful ways for people to transition, it’s going to be very hard for us to move ahead on climate change. But I think the most important thing is to make sure that we’re investing in a new economy. There are discussions in northwest Colorado about the possibility of producing hydrogen there. There are discussions about how to train young people for the 21st-century jobs that are going to be there. But it can’t just be lip service, you know?
“This isn’t just about… a transition on the back end of this. It has to be central to what we’re doing. And there’s $27 billion in forestry work [in Build Back Better], which is incredibly important to my region of the country…Colorado, for example, had three of the worst fires in our state’s history last year as a result of climate change. Now we’re actually going to be putting money on the landscape and creating jobs, doing the forest mitigation and watershed protection up front. And that’s the kind of thing that I think can begin to create momentum in rural America for the work that we have to do on climate change.”
Bennet on the Democrats agenda for rural America:
“[W]e’ve got a path to it, to say [to] people in rural America, look: we’re trying to address the things that you need us to address. This infrastructure bill, which is bipartisan but signed by a Democratic president, is the most significant investment in infrastructure since Eisenhower. The work that we’re trying to do to lower costs for preschool…and to make early childhood education available, the work that we’re doing to limit the cost of prescription drugs for seniors to $2,000, the tax policies that favor our farmers and ranchers in Colorado over, you know, the biggest corporations and wealthiest people in the country, the broadband that we’re creating as part of this legislation – now, none of that stuff is going to sell itself.
“One of the people on my town hall asked the question, why don’t Democrats ever go on Fox News to try to explain what you’re doing? And she’s right about that. We’ve got to be out in rural America describing what we’re doing and explaining what we’re doing. The president is going to have to be out there in rural parts of this country saying, we’re thinking about you. And we are.”
Listen to the full interview HERE.