Originally posted on CBC News.

The Build Back Better bill passed by the House of Representatives offered paid parental leave for a country that lacks it, universal preschool, cheaper child care for 20 million children, lower costs for some drugs including insulin, savings for families using the Obamacare health system, and funding for one million affordable homes.

Researchers at Columbia University also said a new universal child tax credit, inspired in part by Canada’s, cut child poverty this year by more than one-third.

Millions of families benefited from that $300-a-month credit passed during the pandemic, but that credit is about to expire this month.

It would have extended under Build Back Better.

One Boston medical network said it’s seeing fewer children come in suffering from malnutrition and stunted growth.

“[I’m feeling] profound disappointment,” Allison Bovell-Ammon, director of policy strategy at Children’s HealthWatch, a research group at Boston Medical Center.

“This is potentially pushing millions of children back into poverty….We cannot understate the negative consequences of this inaction.”

The $1.75-trillion US legislation would have been funded through tax changes, such as a minimum tax of 15 per cent on the foreign profits of U.S. corporations abroad.