Biden vows billions for ‘Build Back Better World’ with US version blocked
President Biden said Thursday he wants to put billions of dollars into a “Build Back Better World” program for foreign countries after members of his own party stymied his domestic Build Back Better Act.
“We’re going to export billions of dollars worth of product for the rest of the world,” Biden said during remarks at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro. “One of the proposals I have and won’t go into now is the Build Back Better World.
“So all of those countries in Africa and Latin America and the Middle East who don’t have the capacity to make it better for themselves — we cut down all our forests, we’re doing fine,” Biden continued. “Guess what? We are part of the reason for the global warming.”
The concept of a Build Back Better World initiative emerged in June 2021 at that year’s G-7 summit of wealthy democracies in Britain — a nod to the US commander-in-chief as his domestic Build Back Better Act was drafted in Congress.
But the idea of a generous foreign initiative appeared to shrivel on the vine — especially after centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) effectively killed the domestic version of the Build Back Better Act in the evenly divided Senate this past December by arguing that the more than $2 trillion project should not proceed as inflation hit a four-decade high.
The precise contours of Build Back Better World remain unknown, but Biden hinted that it would contain substantial environmental spending.
“A lot of poor countries — do you realize one of the greatest carbon sinks in the world absorbing carbon from the air is the Amazon?” he asked his audience Thursday.
“The Amazon absorbs more pollutants, more carbon into the soil and the water in the Amazon than are emitted in the entire United States in one year, every year,” the president went on. “They don’t have the money, but what they want to do, they want to level it so they can farm it, they can produce things on it and use up that sink.”
The moribund domestic Build Back Better legislation proposed $555 billion in environmental spending, including $320 billion in tax credits for buying electric vehicles, installing solar panels and improve energy efficiency.
The bill also would have capped child care costs at 7% of income for most families, established federal funding for all states to provide preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds and extended an enhanced child tax credit for families that earn up to $150,000 — from $2,000 to $3,000 per child, or $3,600 for those under six.
