American Families Plan
Floor Speech
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Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Madam Speaker, I appreciate Congressman Bowman's organizing this on behalf of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which I am so proud to be a member of, and I really am grateful to him.
Let me just say this in no uncertain terms. Care infrastructure is infrastructure, and it is especially true for women whose opportunities are often limited because we don't really have a working care economy right now.
Every single day nearly 10,000 people turn 65 years old in the United States of America, and yet we do not have in the United States a long- term-care policy. Think about it. The United States of America does not have a real long-term-care policy.
Every family tries to figure out for itself, What are we going to do when grandma and grandpa get older? What are we going to do when I get older? What is the plan? Most people when they retire or have to retire actually don't have enough money to really make the kinds of decisions that they need to and will come up.
Of the people who turn 65, between 50 and 70 percent at that time need some sort of support or care. Where does that come from? Let me be clear; it mostly comes from women.
There is a sociologist who says many countries have a safety net; the United States has women. Paid and unpaid caregivers are women.
Let's talk about the paid caregivers first. People who work in nursing homes, people who work in home care. They make an average of about $12 an hour, with no benefits. You can't live on that. They certainly can't plan for their retirement and to pay for someone to care for them.
And so what do we do? It is pretty clear what has to be done, and actually the Biden administration has actually begun to do it, because everyone should be able to provide and care for their families at any age, for childcare, and certainly for long-term care for the elderly, which is a particular concern of mine.
I am the co-chair of the Democratic Caucus Task Force on Aging and Families, and I am proud of that, coming up with proposals that are going to help our elderly. It is projected that right now we will need about 4 million additional caregivers, people who are either paid or unpaid, by 2028. That is just really around the corner. 4 million. We do not have enough.
First of all, we have to pay the workers a living wage. Now, President Biden has come up with a plan for $400 billion for home and community-based care. That is a lot of money. It can be a game changer.
The idea is to be able to provide more money, more wages for those who suit up every day and go to work, and during the pandemic often in very dangerous situations where they don't have enough of the PPE, the personal protective equipment, to take care of them and protect them against the virus. They suit up every day and go to work and can barely take care of their own families.
And what about all the women who have had to leave the workforce because they did not have anyone to care for their children or for their parents or both? The sandwich generation has to worry about making sure that they have someone to care for their children and someone who will help them to take care of their elderly relatives. That burden has fallen on women who have ended up having to leave the workforce.
We need to act now. We need to act to fill this gap, to have a real program for long-term care, to have real help for childcare so that women can go to work to care for their families, to have the income that it really takes.
This is not rocket science. It is that we need to pay attention. We need to have the policies in place. We need to have the infrastructure in place, the plan on how we are going to deliver the care that is needed. Without it, we will not be able to move forward economically in this country, and certainly women will pay, especially pay, the price, and often it is women that are low income, women of color that suffer.
So I am happy that we are seeing the Biden administration, we are seeing the Democrats, we are seeing the progressives move forward with that plan that will actually provide the infrastructure we need.
And let me just end by saying that care infrastructure is infrastructure.
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