Congress Closing in on Popular $400 Billion Investment in Support for Aging Adults, People With Disabilities and Family Caregivers
NEW YORK (August 24, 2021)—Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives passed a $3.5 trillion budget resolution today, which signals the start of the reconciliation process. Today’s vote opens a historic opportunity in the federal budget process to replace the nation’s inadequate patchwork system of care with bold new policies to improve health and bolster the economy.
In response, Ai-jen Poo, executive director of Caring Across Generations and the National Domestic Workers Alliance made this statement:
“As the pandemic stretches on, prioritizing investments in care—care for the aging and people with disabilities in the home and community, paid leave and child care—is absolutely essential. The Build Back Better agenda is incomplete without care, which is why President Biden proposed a $400 billion investment in home and community based care for older adults and people with disabilities. Our population is aging fast, few family members can afford to stay home to care for their loved ones, and yet care workers receive minimal pay and no benefits. Investing $400 billion in home and community services will generate more than 1 million jobs, especially for women, and enable working moms and family caregivers to get back to work. This is essential infrastructure for a strong, equitable economy, and one that will help more of us live, age and work with dignity.”
For more information about which states have the longest waitlists for home and community based services (HCBS) through Medicaid—there are more than 800,000 on waitlists nationally—see this tracker.
For more information about how many jobs the Build Back Better plan’s investments in HCBS would generate in every state, see this June 2021 UMassAmherst analysis.
For more information about an ongoing series of roundtables around HCBS hosted by the White House, Caring Across Generations and The Arc, email jwang@caringacross.org.
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Caring Across Generations is a national movement of families, caregivers, people with disabilities, and aging Americans working to transform the way we care in this country. By harnessing the power of online and grassroots organizing and culture change work, we are shifting how our nation values caregiving and calling for policy solutions that enable all of us to live well and age with dignity. For more information, please visit http://caringacross.org.