Can you afford to take care of your children and parents? Biden revives effort to lower costs

WASHINGTON (AP) — As President Joe Biden runs for reelection, he’s resurrecting proposals to reshape American life from the cradle to the grave by lowering the cost of child care, expanding preschool opportunities and making home aides more available to the elderly.

The initiatives were once part of Build Back Better, Biden’s gargantuan legislative agenda that stalled on Capitol Hill two years ago. Now they’re what Neera Tanden, the Democratic president's top domestic policy adviser, describes as “unfinished business.”

Although the White House has tried to advance these ideas in a piecemeal fashion through regulations and executive orders, Biden hopes to have another opportunity to push more ambitious legislation through Congress in a second term.

*PRESSURES ON THE ‘SANDWICH GENERATION’*

As Biden faces blowback for inflation under his watch, his team sees an opportunity to promise lower costs for voters who are part of the “sandwich generation” — those responsible for young children and aging parents at the same time.

Proposals involving what's collectively known as the care economy might prove particularly potent with women, who are more likely to hold low-paying jobs as caregivers or see their careers sidelined by the need to take care of family members. If successful, Biden would bring the United States more in line with other wealthy countries, where generous safety net programs are the norm.

“There are elements of our policies that tend to keep us back," Tanden said in an interview with The Associated Press. "Families need to scrounge around for child care, and they make those hard decision about whether they can really have everyone working in the family or not.”

Biden wants to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into nationwide paid family leave, federal...