Biden’s bill would change that.Īll told, the federal government’s new programs for paid parental leave, child care and an expanded child tax credit “would be pretty major, if not landmark, change for social policy and expanding its reach into the depths of how families cope in the modern economy,” said Sarah Binder, a political science professor at George Washington University. remains among a handful of wealthy countries that do not offer paid time off to care for children or sick loved ones. The child care subsidies would attempt to guarantee that most Americans don’t spend more than 7% of their income on child care.Īnd while Congress approved the Family and Medical Leave Act nearly 30 years ago to guarantee time off, the U.S.
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Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat with two young children.īiden’s big bill combines a series of long-sought Democratic goals to shore up families that have been tried before only to run into resistance, as they have again today, with Republicans in lockstep against the package. “I think COVID really illustrated to people how broken our child care system is in a way that people finally understood,” said Sen. Taken together, it’s Democrats’ answer to President Richard Nixon’s veto of a 1971 child care bill and the earlier scrapping of World War II-era child care centers, potentially providing families with more government help than ever as many struggle in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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on course to providing free prekindergarten, paid family leave to care for children or sick loved ones, and an enhanced child tax credit in a massive expansion of federal support to working families. Biden’s bill making its way through Congress would put the U.S. With President Joe Biden’s $1.85 trillion social services package, they are as close as they have ever been to winning.Īnd it’s not just child care subsidies.
Top Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod tweeted shortly after Biden’s appearance, “What VP said - that all married couples should have exactly the same legal rights - is precisely POTUS’s position.” The statement was worded in such a way as to only endorse those states which already offer equal rights to gay and lesbian citizens.WASHINGTON (AP) - Women - and some men - in Congress have been fighting for government child care assistance for almost 80 years. VIDEO: GLAAD Media Awards 2012: Red Carpet Interviews … I think Will & Grace did more to educate the American public more than almost anything anybody has done so far. But Biden suggested the country was on a course for change, pointing out that such a shift begins “when the social culture changes. The Vice President would not specifiy whether or not the Obama-Biden administration would pursue same-sex marriage rights should they win a second term in office, saying only the matter “is evolving” - the same language used in the past by president Barack Obama to describe his own feelings on the topic. And quite frankly I don’t see much of a distinction beyond that.”
All the civil rights, all the civil liberties. I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying woman and heterosexual men marrying women are entitled to the same, exact rights.
Pressed by Gregory to acknowledge whether or not that meant he was “comfortable” with same-sex marriage, Biden replied, “Look, I am Vice President of the United States of America.
PHOTOS: GLAAD Media Awards 2012: Brown Carpet Arrivals In explaining his thinking, Biden credited Will & Grace - NBC’s hit situation comedy about a gay man and his straight, female best friend that ran on the network from 1998 to 2006 - as having done more to shift public perception on the issue than anything else.Īsked by host David Gregory if his position on same-sex marriage had “evolved” to the point where he was now openly accepting of it, Biden said, “I just think that the good news is that … more and more Americans come to understand what this is all about is a simple proposition: Who do you love? Who do you love and will you be loyal to the person you love? And that’s what people are finding out what all marriages at their root are about.” official to openly endorse equal marriage rights for gay and lesbian citizens. Vice President Joe Biden made history on NBC’s Meet the Press this morning, becoming the highest-ranking U.S.