IOWA—(ENEWSPF)—November 23, 2015. At a town hall meeting in Iowa yesterday, Hillary Clinton proposed plans that support the millions of families paying for, coordinating, or providing care for aging or disabled family members. Clinton called for the creation of a new tax credit for middle-class families who care for ailing parents and grandparents as well as reforms to protect their Social Security benefits when they work as care givers. She also highlighted plans to change work-family policies so they better support paid and unpaid caregivers. Clinton will continue to announce a range of tax cuts and other plans aimed at boosting the take-home pay for middle-class families over the weeks and months ahead.
For a fact sheet detailing Clinton’s proposal to support families providing care to loved ones, click here.
Below is the full transcript of Clinton’s remarks from today’s town hall meeting in Clinton, IA:
“Good to see you all. Thank you very much.
“I am thrilled to be back in Clinton. I love saying that. That I’m in Clinton. And earlier today I learned that Clinton actually is named for DeWitt Clinton, one of the first Governors of New York, and a man who served a really long time and among his many accomplishments was the Erie Canal which opened up the West for development. I still don’t have the whole story about DeWitt Clinton came to get his name [inaudible]. So afterwards, somebody please tell me because I am really interested in that.
“I want to thank [inaudible] for introducing me and telling you a little bit of her story because I want to start this evening by saying a few things and then throwing it open to talk about whatever might be on any of your minds. I want to thank Dan [inaudible], the principal here at the Clinton Middle School and the middle school staff and in fact the students, I know there are some students here as well. I want to thank [inaudible], the chair of the Clinton County Democrats and Mary Wolf, the state representative, Mary Wolf. [inaudible]. Thank you for being here. [Inaudible], the chair of the Jackson County Democrats and [inaudible] the former state representative.
“I have been really looking forward to this evening because you just heard Elizabeth tell you about coming home to take care of her mother is a variation of a story that I have heard across Iowa and indeed across America. I have been traveling to a lot of places with the whole point of actually listening to what people are experiencing. In order to give me a better sense of how I can be a President, not only for the big issues that make the headlines and we will talk about those: ISIS, climate change, cybersecurity, you name them, but also all of the problems that keep families up at night. I really do want to be a President who is there for you. And helps to figure out ways to help you help yourself, help your families, help your communities. It may be because I am from the Midwest. I was born in Chicago. I was raised in a suburb. I feel a strong sense of gratitude for my parents who instilled in me a real belief in hard work and personal responsibility, but the world has gotten much more complicated and we now have to take a step back and say, “How do we help empower people today so that they can make the same good choices for their lives?” Millions of families are struggling to provide care for loved ones. Sometimes its children who are born with disability or maybe are diagnosed with autism. Sometimes it is Alzheimer’s: a parent, a spouse, a grandparent. Other [inaudible] disabilities, illnesses and conditions.
“My mother lived with us for the end of her life and having her there was just an amazing blessing for me. It was such a joy to have her in my home, coming home for dinner or home later that evening from the Senate or from the State Department, it was just great to be able to sit down and talk with her and she was so interested in everything that was going on. But I also know it was a sense of responsibility. Thankfully she was in pretty good health until she passed, but there were hospitalizations. There were doctor’s appointments, the kinds of things that happen in every family that I know of.
“For a lot of caregivers though, it is much, much more than that. It may mean, as Elizabeth said, really uprooting yourself and coming home to care for a parent, an aunt, an uncle, a sibling. For some it means missing work. For others it means cutting back on the hours at work or cutting into personal days, family time, vacation days. The lost wages and the work that is sometimes given up are costing families, especially women who make up the majority of both paid and unpaid caregivers. And who tend to live longer than men.
“And this is also costing our economy. There is about 470 billion dollars every year in unpaid medical support and services and lost productivity. I started seeing this years ago. And as a Senator, I passed a law that gave family caregivers more support so they could get rested to take care of their own health, their own wellbeing as they care for loved ones. And as president, I will make this a national priority. I believe we need to start investing in the caring economy. We need to recognize the value of the work that caregivers give to all of us, both those who are paid and the great numbers [inaudible].
“So as president, I will propose a tax credit to help family members off set up to 6,000 dollars in caregiving costs for their elderly family members. That will help family budgets stretch, it will help seniors maintain independence. Because I hear all the time about, as you heard from Elizabeth, it is really hard on social security and even if you have got a small pension, to be able to take care of all of your personal needs. And it will provide the absolutely invaluable sense of dignity and independence. Now all the time that people take out of paid work to care for a family member can end up putting a big dent into their retirement benefits.
“In fact this is one of the biggest problems in Social Security, that whether a woman leaves the workforce to care for children, or leaves the workforce to care for a spouse or a parent, it means that there is not then an income coming in that could be used to help calculate Social Security benefits later. And I think we have got to recognize that for many women, this has a very serious impact on the amount of money they then draw from Social Security, in order to take care of themselves. In fact on Social Security day, the poorest recipients are single women and divorced women who either did not work or worked part-time or worked but then stopped working because of caregiving responsibilities. So I want to expand Social Security by taking into account the often overlooked and undervalued work of family caregivers. I want to give you the benefits you deserve. You should be able to earn credit for Social Security. Providing care for a loved one should not mean sacrificing your own secure retirement.
“And there is a related challenge we need to take on. Many families count on home care workers for help. And I have met some of these extraordinary people who give so much of themselves in caring for others. They often find themselves among the lowest paid people in our country. Too many health care workers actually are living in poverty, struggling to support their own families while they care for others.
“I met a woman from Nevada not so long ago who has been providing care for seniors and people with disabilities for more than four decades. She still makes than $10 an hour. I met a woman from Minnesota who recalls standing in the grocery store with her infant and toddler because she was a home health care worker, she really was having a hard time trying to figure out what to buy, toilet paper or laundry soap. So today I am launching a new health care workers initiative because I think we have got to do more increase the pay, the training, and the standing of home health care workers.
“When a worker costs several agencies to create career ladders and apprenticeships to help ensure fair pay and connect up care workers to the families who need them, it is going to require both on sides. Because a lot of the families who get paid home care could not afford to pay much more than they are paying. So even though they would like to be able to see the income of the person helping them go up, it cannot come just from them. We have got to figure out how we do this with a combination of tax credits and subsidies and support so that we can take care of people and the other point I would make.
“We can avoid additional expenses, because the alternative to home health care are nursing homes or other facilities that are much more expensive. So how do we try to square this in a way that takes care of families, gives more support to unpaid family caregivers, gives more support to paid caregivers at a cost that families can afford and save money because the alternative would be an additional burden on all of us? So the bottom line for me is caregiving takes a lot of love and a lot of challenging experiences that often test ones emotional and physical wellbeing.
“I remember I was in a town hall like this in Dover, New Hampshire a few months ago and I called on a woman and she said she literally had raced over to ask me what I was going to do about Alzheimer’s because she was taking care of both her husband with Alzheimers and her mother with Alzheimers and she had gotten a neighbor to come in but could not be gone for long. And I cannot tell you how many stories I hear like that. A young man was taking care of his mother. She is 84. She has Alzheimers. He is a teacher. He cannot quit his job because that is how he supports her but he cannot afford a caregiver so he takes her to work with him. And these are the stories that really demonstrate to me the courage and the resilience of so many people in our country.
“And it is why I believe so strongly that we should be cutting taxes for hardworking families, not raising them and giving more tax breaks to middle class families not rich individuals and corporations [inaudible]. So I am looking at the tax code about how we go after the deductions and all of the benefits that are in there from taking away one of the worst benefits for hedge fund managers that enables them to pay a lower tax rate to going after the deductions that encourage corporations to move overseas. I have proposed tax credits to help middle class families pay for college and [inaudible] out of pocket health care costs. Now I am adding the caregivers credit. I will be proposing more plans for additional tax relief and simplification and I am laying how I will pay for everything I propose. I want you to know that because I believe that it is very important to be fiscally responsible. And to tell you, “Okay here is what I want to do and here is how I will pay for it.” Because at the end of the day, we have got to deal with the economy in a way that creates more good paying jobs, raises wages, and we have to make sure that the federal government is making smart investments again.
“Under the Republicans, it has been really hard, but we are going to get back to a full court press on making investments that will make us richer and safer and stronger. Now there is a lot we can do [inaudible].
“I know that there are a number of you that are all really involved in my campaign. And working to help me to do well in the caucuses on February 1st, but I want you to consider joining us. We are really anxious to have as many people involved as possible. You can start right now. Just take out your phone and text JOIN, this is for younger people, just take out your phone and text JOIN, J-O-I-N, to 47246 to get involved. You can also go to my website: Hillaryclinton.com. You can sign up to help here in Iowa. We have got the most amazing team here who are just building an incredible organization. Every one of you can be a part of it and I am so proud, I have to tell you this, I am so proud, that mine is the first campaign in history that the majority of my contributions are coming from women so I really want to reach out to all of you.”
Source: www.hillaryclinton.com
