Joe Biden will unveil a proposal Tuesday for $775 billion in federal spending to improve the caregiver workforce, with a focus on early childhood education and elder care.
Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, is slated to announce the plan at an event Tuesday afternoon in New Castle, Delaware. The Biden campaign said the plan would lead to 3 million new caregiving and education jobs over the next 10 years.
The campaign offered few details about where the funding would come from, but it told reporters that Biden would roll back tax breaks for real estate investors making more than $400,000 annually and enforce tax compliance.
The plan also includes sending emergency funding for states and tribal governments to keep child care and elder care centers fully operational. Affordable child care has become harder to find as so many centers have been made to shut down due to the economic restrictions placed on businesses earlier in the pandemic.
An April survey of more than 5,000 child care providers conducted by the National Association for the Education of Young Children found that nearly half of all child care facilities have completely shut down due to economic strains brought about by the pandemic. The Center for American Progress, a left-leaning public policy research organization, reported in April that the pandemic could cause about 4.5 million child care slots to be lost for good.
Essential workers, such as healthcare providers in hospitals who could not work from home, have faced difficulty finding childcare as countless centers have shut down. As businesses begin to reopen, the difficulty of accessing child care services may keep parents from being able to return to work.
Biden’s proposal also seeks to reform the elder care system, which has come under fire as new reporting comes out about widespread coronavirus transmission in nursing homes. His plan would allocate $450 billion to be devoted to elderly care and to creating about 1.5 million jobs in caregiving and community healthcare. Biden also plans to eliminate the waiting list of about 800,000 people seeking community- and home-based care.
The remaining $325 billion included in Biden’s plan is intended to make child care more affordable for families by providing access to free pre-kindergarten for all 3- and 4-year-olds, a recommendation generated from a joint policy task force with Sen. Bernie Sanders and his allies. An increase in the number of available child care slots would create 1.5 million new child care and early childhood education jobs, according to the campaign.
Child care workers would get boosts in pay and benefits. Biden’s plan would also expand subsidies to give kids better access to after-school programs and summer activities. It would also provide avenues that parents studying at community colleges could take to access affordable child care.
Low- and middle-income families would be offered up to $8,000 in tax credits per child to help pay for child care. Higher-income families would be eligible for partial credit.
