Biden’s American Rescue Plan props up underserved communities with jobs, education

Wally Adeyemo is the deputy secretary of the U.S. Treasury Department.

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s last speech was given in Memphis, in support of sanitation staff on strike for safer working conditions and higher pay. Dr. King recognized that economic opportunity was inextricably linked to civil rights and had come to Memphis as a part of his broader Poor People’s Campaign for economic justice. His approach was rooted in a belief that ending racial inequality was unattainable without economic equity and that racism holds back economic growth for everybody.

As we approach each the second anniversary of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan on Saturday — and the fifty fifth anniversary of Dr. King’s speech, it’s price considering why economic equity is so central to President Joe Biden’s economic strategy. It is an element of an economic agenda that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has called “modern supply-side economics” — expanding our nation’s economic capability by investing in its human capital, labor supply, public infrastructure, and sustainability — especially in underserved communities.

The Biden-Harris administration has spent the last two years making exactly these sorts of investments. The historic gains our economy has made over the past two years lend support to our economic strategy of unlocking the unrealized potential of marginalized Americans to construct an economy that works for everybody.

When President Biden took office, our country faced its biggest economic challenge in generations. Considered one of our key objectives was to stop economic scarring. That is the long-term, everlasting economic damage from shocks like job loss or eviction that forestalls people and households fully getting back on their feet. It also ultimately holds back overall growth as those affected are prevented from reaching their potential.

This began with policies just like the Advance Child Tax Credit, which under the Rescue Plan offered monthly payments to families and helped lift 3.5 million children out of poverty. As well as, actions to stop evictions equivalent to the Emergency Rental Assistance program, which provides rental payment support to families susceptible to eviction, contributed to the prevention of greater than 1.3 million evictions through the pandemic.

Last yr, I met a girl named Diamond who lost her job as a consequence of the pandemic — and nearly lost her home. But as an alternative, federal eviction-prevention funds kept a roof over her head, allowed her to enroll in training for a latest profession, and helped keep her daughter in the identical school. This assistance did greater than prevent the worst-case final result — it helped unlock latest opportunity for Diamond and her daughter.

Expanding our labor force is one other area where efforts to support communities of color and other underserved communities helps to unleash economic gains for all Americans. Today, employers across quite a few industries report that they’re scuffling with a labor shortage. We now have already made great strides to bring more staff into the labor force. Besides, giving more Americans in communities of color and rural areas the flexibility to access strong employment opportunities would profit the whole U.S. economy by each addressing the labor shortage and expanding our economic capability.

President Biden’s policies have sought to deal with this challenge head-on. Last yr, I visited Orlando, Florida, where the mayor took me on a tour of a workforce training center funded by the President’s American Rescue Plan. And last month, I visited Spelman College, a historically Black college in Atlanta, which shall be a recipient of recent Satcher grants that may create opportunities to enter the cybersecurity field at HBCUs and minority-serving institutions, helping to fill a niche of greater than 700,000 unfilled cybersecurity jobs nationwide.

Finally, the Biden administration is constructing the physical and digital infrastructure needed for all Americans to participate and compete within the twenty first century economy. There is no such thing as a higher example of this than the greater than $75 billion we’re providing to bring reliable, high-speed web to all Americans. Expanding access to high-speed web shall be the electrification of the twenty first century, bringing opportunity to regions which have long faced barriers to full economic participation.

The advantages of this effort shall be particularly powerful in underserved communities. In dense urban areas, Black households are twice as prone to lack high-speed web as white households. And across the country, at the least 17% of rural Americans lack access to fixed broadband, in comparison with 1 percent of Americans in urban areas. The investments we’re making will close this gap for good and ensure all Americans have the web access needed to thrive and compete in today’s economy.

For too long, racism and discrimination have limited the flexibility of underserved communities to completely contribute to our civic and economic advancement. It’s price recalling that Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech was not only about civil rights; it was delivered as a part of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which explicitly recognized the connection between economic and racial equity. The one option to make Dr. King’s dream a reality is to proceed our work constructing an economy that works for everybody.