American Families Plan

Floor Speech

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Ms. JAYAPAL. Madam Speaker, I thank Congressman Bowman for yielding to me and also for his tremendous leadership in the Progressive Caucus. We are so proud to welcome him into the Progressive Caucus, into Congress, and to have the benefit of his tremendous experience in education, in caregiving, on so many fronts. I am so proud to cosponsor the Care resolution with the gentleman. I think it is a very important statement.

Madam Speaker, I am also very proud to be here as the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. This is our Special Order hour that we get to devote to any topic that we want; and, today, it is a real privilege and an honor to devote it to the American Families Plan.

Why?

Because the American Families Plan and the American Jobs Plan are what this country needs and what this country wants. Democrats, Republicans, and Independents across the country have said clearly that they are ready for a big, bold investment that allows us, allows America, to build back better.

That is what the President has proposed because, Madam Speaker, at the core of any society is how we care and look out for each other. That reality was made undeniably clear as we have struggled to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic, with over 600,000 deaths.

And at the root of our recovery is how we look out for each other, how we give each other opportunities, how we ensure that America truly is a country where we are all better off when we are all better off.

For me, coming to this country by myself at the age of 16, now getting to serve in the United States Congress as the first South Asian-American woman, I have watched how too many people across America do not have that opportunity. They do not have the investments that we, as a Federal Government, should make in order for them to be successful.

Now, our care economy is broad. I am not just talking about essential healthcare providers, like nurses and doctors who cared for patients struck by COVID-19. I am talking about the broader care infrastructure, and that includes childcare. It includes home- and community-care services. And it includes providing everyone with basic paid family and medical leave and more.

The American Families Plan also includes investing in healthcare for everyone across America, investing in education, the kind of education that gave me my opportunity to come here. We need to provide that 2 years of free community college or college for people across this country so that they can get the additional skills they need.

We need to invest in housing and, of course, we need to invest in this broader care economy.

At the end of the day, our American Families Plan, the President's American Families Plan, the jobs plan, has to be about every person across this country, working-class, poor, people who are seeking opportunity, people who deserve to have the American Dream that is no more; to make sure that every person, White, Black, and Brown, with understanding that the disproportionate burden of our inequities and racial injustices in the United States have fallen on Black, Brown, and Indigenous people, we need to make sure that all people are taken care of and have opportunity.

Care infrastructure is the critical infrastructure that allows our families and communities to thrive and stay healthy.

Take, for instance, the home care workers across the country who have been serving on the front lines of the pandemic. For those most vulnerable to COVID, such as people with disabilities and seniors, home care workers were often the difference between life and death. Home care workers allowed many of those most vulnerable to avoid congregate settings, like nursing and group homes, that saw a high spread of COVID.

Yet, this critical workforce shrunk by 280,000 people at the beginning of the pandemic, despite an increasing need for home care services. That is why the Biden administration has proposed investing $400 billion to expand the home care workforce, something I was very proud to help negotiate last year as part of our Unity Task Force on healthcare.

But we can't stop there, and the American Families Plan doesn't stop there. The American Families Plan also recognizes that the majority of caregivers, as Mr. Bowman said, are women and disproportionately women of color. Many of them are responsible for care at home, which is a huge reason why we have seen women forced out of the workforce in record numbers.

In December 2020 alone, women accounted for nearly all the jobs lost, with a disproportionately high number of job losses coming from women of color.

That is why we need robust investments in universal childcare. No family, regardless of income, should pay more than 7 percent of their income on childcare. And we have to eliminate administrative barriers, like work requirements, that make it much more difficult for low-income White, Black, Brown, and indigenous people to access childcare.

Finally, we have to ensure strong labor standards for this care workforce. We cannot entrust people to care for the most valuable people in our lives and deny them a living wage, the right to join a union, and paid leave. These workers give our loved ones dignity. They give so many of us the ability to work outside of our homes to support our families.

As we talk about domestic workers, I am so proud to have the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights that I have introduced in Congress. Let's remember that this care work is the work that allows all other work to be possible.

This is an important moment for us to pass the American Families Plan to invest in education, to invest in healthcare, to lower the Medicare eligibility age, to take on prescription drugs, and to invest in this oh-so-important care economy. It is time to deliver for the American people so we continue to build back better and ensure that everyone has the support they need.

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