Kamala Harris Is the Candidate Who Values Care

After her third child was born, Jerri, a sandwich-generation mom who lives in the Atlanta suburbs, left her job in retail because her entire paycheck would have gone to pay for childcare. Today, with her youngest child graduating high school, Jerri dreams of a “third act” as a nurse. But she’s also caring for her aging father, a retired Air Force veteran with advanced dementia, at home on her own. Jerri’s story is America’s story—the story of caregivers who hold our communities together yet lack the support necessary to realize the opportunity of America for themselves. Vice President Kamala Harris and her “opportunity economy” agenda have given Jerri new hope that a better future for caregivers is within reach.

The care economy may seem like a new concept, but for millions of working families, it defines our daily lives. More than half of the workforce juggles full-time jobs with caregiving responsibilities, often spending an extra 30 hours per week on care. A new Rand Corp study found that 105.6 million adults in America are caregivers. That number has more than doubled in the last decade. From child care to care for loved ones who are ill to disability and senior care, our roles as caregivers are varied and complex. But one thing’s consistent—it’s costly.

The average American family pays more for childcare than for rent or mortgage payments. A room in a nursing home can cost more than $100,000 per year. Approximately 700,000 older adults and people with disabilities are languishing on Medicaid waiting lists for essential care, and over half of U.S. families live in “child care deserts” without access to quality care. Even care workers themselves—the people who have dedicated their lives to supporting the loved ones of their community members—earn poverty wages and struggle to make ends meet. A $25,000 yearly median income only stretches so far.

Our failure to invest, as a nation, in policies that would make care more affordable and accessible and raise wages for care workers has put us between a rock and a hard place. Families can’t afford to pay more for care, and care workers can’t afford to get paid less.

With just a few weeks until election day, Harris appeared on ABC’s The View to announce Medicare at Home, her new plan to have Medicare cover the cost of home-based care for older adults and people with disabilities. This new benefit would help the millions of working and middle-class families who earn too much to be eligible for Medicaid-based care but too little to afford private long-term care insurance or pay for care out of pocket. Her plan is to pay for this benefit by having Medicare renegotiate the cost of prescription drugs with pharmaceutical companies. The plan will also save the health care system money wasted on unnecessary hospitalizations due to lack of access to caregiving.

The issue of care is personal for Harris, too. While serving as Attorney General of California, she cared for her mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, before she died of cancer. Harris has shared that she remembers trying to cook food her mother would eat after she lost her appetite, the search for clothing that wouldn’t irritate her skin, and how it felt to be able to make her laugh. She has also spoken about how her mother, who worked long hours as a scientist, relied on a caregiver named Ms. Shelton to help raise her daughters.

The Harris agenda invests in caregivers, unpaid and paid, by aiming to cap the cost of child care at 7% of income, establish paid family and medical leave, expand access to care at home, and raise wages for care workers. These are the kinds of investments that would help families participate and stay in the workforce and realize the promise of opportunity in America. In contrast, the conservative agenda described in Project 2025 seeks to eliminate Head Start, restrict access to Medicaid— the program through which most Americans who need care at home receive it—and weaken Medicare.

Public investment has transformed other sectors of the economy, from clean energy to semiconductor manufacturing. The Inflation Reduction Act invested billions into clean energy infrastructure, while the CHIPS Act revitalized U.S.-based semiconductor production. Like infrastructure investments, care enables workforce participation in every sector, particularly among women. If women’s workforce participation matched that of countries like Germany or Canada, which have national paid leave and family care policies, it would add over $775 billion in economic activity in the U.S. annually.

With the election around the corner, Jerri arranged for her children to help care for her dad so she could sign up for two volunteer canvass shifts weekly to knock on voters’ doors, share her care story, and help mobilize support for the Harris-Walz campaign. Jerri doesn’t want to give up her dream of becoming a nurse; she wants her father to have dignified care at home and her children to have the economic freedom that good care policies offer. For her, every door and every volunteer shift is a wish for a better future for caregivers. If we elect a president who understands and values care, she might just get her wish.

Ai-jen Poo is President of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Executive Director of Caring Across Generations, and an advisor for Care in Action. She is a member of the 2012 TIME100.

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