Washington, D.C. — U.S. Representative Mark Pocan (WI-02) spoke with Pamela Brown on CNN this afternoon to discuss the Build Back Better Act.
Click here to watch the full interview, and find excerpts of Rep. Pocan’s remarks below.
“We want to get this done. We’ve been negotiating for a number of weeks, we’re down to just a few issues. But what we want to do is pass these two bills, the Build Back Better agenda of the President’s. And that’s what the American people are going to benefit from. 40 million American families get a tax cut, lowering costs from everything from child care to prescription drugs, creating jobs, many of which tackle climate change. And it’s paid for, as you’re all just talking about largely by the wealthy and those corporations that have not paid taxes for a long time. It’s a popular agenda that the American people will actually benefit from, that’s what we need to deliver. And she just wanted to make sure that we’re able to get it done.”
“This isn’t a fight within the Democratic Party. I mean, 48 senators, and over 200 members of the House are all ready to go on this. We’ve got a couple senators, that we’ve been trying to get forward on a couple issues. And when we get this done, and we will get this done, this is going to be a really big transformative change for many American families. I look at what we’re doing, it’s probably as big as anything Congress has done since the 40s or 50s.”
“Since we had that strategy [to hold on voting for the Bipartisan Infrastructure bill], we now have a prescription drug benefit that’s going to be in the bill. Since that strategy, we now have family medical leave in that bill, as well as many other things. So yeah, it was a damn good strategy, because we’ve got more benefits for the American people. And I think we’re ready to vote on this, because now this has enough that people will really see the benefit for their family. And it’s about time that real people got some benefits from their federal government.”
“The good news is when we get this bill done, when people see that they can pay no more than 7% of their income for childcare, when they’re getting a tax cut to the Child Tax Credit for years going forward, that we’re finally addressing climate change, those are all things that you haven’t had a Congress do in a long time, and we’re going to deliver more than you’ve seen in decades.”
“We’ve got 17 Nobel winning economist who said that when we pass both of these bills you won’t have the inflationary aspects we’re having right now. I’m a small business owner for 34 years, we’ve got supply shortages, we’ve got all sorts of things, because the whole world is coming out of COVID right now, and that’s bringing some prices up and no question that impacted how people looked at the election. But that isn’t the impact of what we’re doing, we’re going to actually fix the economy and help American people at the same time. And inflation will not be negatively impacted by what we’re doing.”
“When you have these two bills done, people will see what we’ve all delivered: the childcare, the fact you’re not paying more than 7% of your childcare will save families $5,000-$10,000 each who have a single child, in health care, the fact that they’re paying less for prescription drugs, the fact that we’re finally addressing climate change and creating jobs to actually address that. That’s what people will really see. But you needed to get both bills done to get that done. Just in the last week, since we didn’t vote on the infrastructure bill, we now have paid and family medical leave for four weeks in the bill and a prescription drug benefit, and people will feel that.”
