How the ‘Build Back Better’ plan saves money and lives

The pandemic recession has clearly demonstrated just how much good government can do for ordinary folks when it makes robust investments in our communities.

Federal spending kept 53 million people out of poverty in 2020 and staved off the worst of the pandemic recession’s effects. In the midst of a devastating economic crash, those investments actually managed to lower the overall poverty rate.

And yet almost 30 million people across the country still struggled with poverty last year. In Hawaiʻi, with our high cost of housing and chronically low wages, 166,000 residents struggled to cover their basic needs in 2020.

Many of them are minimum wage workers paying an effective tax rate that is almost double the effective tax rate paid by the richest Hawaiʻi residents.

Allowing poverty to persist is a costly policy choice. Every single year, child poverty alone costs the United States more than $1 trillion in lost economic productivity, increased health costs, increased costs related to crime, and increased costs resulting from child homelessness and maltreatment.