Infrastructure Financing Advances in House as $3.5 Billion Spending Package Takes Shape

"The House Ways and Means Committee late Friday released an additional tranche of its portion of Democrats’ $3.5 trillion social spending package, covering a wide range of issues such as the child tax credit, infrastructure financing, clean energy incentives and health care," reports Naomi Jagoda.

The $3.5 trillion package will include the closely watched Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, approved by the Senate in August 2021, but much of the focus in this article is on the bill's extension (until 2025) of the child tax credit enacted earlier this year. "The bill would also make permanent expansions of the earned income tax credit and the child and dependent care tax credit. Those two credits and the child tax credit had been expanded as part of the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief law that Biden signed in March," according to Jagoda.

Regarding infrastructure financing and housing, however: "The bill includes several provisions focused on tax-advantaged bonds, including the creation of a bond program that is similar to the Build America Bonds that were part of President Obama’s 2009 stimulus law."

"The bill also would expand the low income housing tax credit that benefits developers of affordable rental units," adds Jagoda. "The bill would extend a number of tax incentives for clean energy, and would create new tax credits for electric-vehicle owners."