This Could Be Biden's B.F.D.
Maybe we can talk, just for a minute, about what's actually in the Democratic reconciliation bill
Democrats are well into the process of writing a bill that could be the most ambitious legislation since the Great Society and almost nobody is talking about what the legislation would actually do.
My latest article at HuffPost looks at one part and why it could be truly transformative -- if, and only if, there’s enough funding behind it.
It’s actually a set of three different proposals that focus on caregiving. One would offer paid leave to workers, one would effectively guarantee child care to any family that wants it, and one would transform funding of the programs that allow disabled and elderly Americans to live on their own rather than in institutions.
Americans were desperate for help with these services even before the pandemic. Now the need is even more acute and more visible. And a common factor in the reforms is that they would all recognize the financial value of caregiving, which is something our society has never really done.
Of course, there’s a reason for that: Historically caregiving work has fallen to women, who had to provide it for little or, sometimes, no pay. That’s been especially true for women of color. The legacy of that is a care workforce that is grossly underpaid, with large numbers living below poverty and on public assistance.
The Democratic plans would address this by lifting wages for care workers and then, simultaneously, making sure individual families have the money to pay for care. In other words, it would try to help the people providing the care as well as those receiving it.
All of this would require a lot of money. The three care components together would, if fully funded, cost something in the neighborhood of $1 trillion over ten years -- i.e., a pretty big chunk of the $3.5 trillion spending package.
And fully funding the proposals is already looking difficult. Under pressure to cram everything into their bill, Democratic leaders have already scaled down the home and community proposal to about half its original funding request. If the legislation as a whole ends up even smaller -- as Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema and their allies want, there could be more cutbacks.
There’s a sound argument that the investment would pay for itself, once you consider the benefits, which would include everything from higher living standards for the working class (which is increasingly care workers, rather than factory workers) to giving young children a much better start on life.
At their best, these reforms could transform American life just as profoundly as Social Security, Medicare and other historic reforms have. But such big changes would require big spending up front.
You will find the article here:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/biden-democratic-child-care-paid-leave-hcbs-agenda_n_61457709e4b0efa77f80410a
Thanks for reading!