Kamala Harris has been releasing her plans for the “care economy” in piecemeal fashion — a strategy very much unlike the other planks of her economic agenda.
The latest slice came Tuesday with a proposal to expand care for seniors.
“What we will do is allow Medicare to cover in-home healthcare,” said Harris during an appearance on ABC’s “The View” to immediate applause from the studio audience.
“It is a way to help people not just get by but get ahead,” she added Tuesday during a wide-ranging interview that also touched on issues from Hurricane Milton to Saturday Night Live.
It was the latest in a series of announcements from the Vice President’s campaign — often done strategically before interested audiences — where the Vice President has promised efforts if she wins to have the government take on an increasing role in the care of Americans from young children to seniors. The pitches are notably tailored to those in the middle.
The new proposal released Tuesday would establish an expanded home care benefit through the Medicare program to help families afford caring for seniors at home instead of turning to nursing facilities.
It’s a plan with a clear appeal for seniors. But Harris aimed her pitch Tuesday to their kids, often called the “sandwich generation” because they are middle-aged Americans tasked with both helping a parent aged 65 or older while also raising children.
It’s a cohort that includes nearly a quarter of American adults and a large number of undecided voters.
“There are so many people in our country who are right in the middle,” Harris added in a direct appeal to the group Tuesday. “It’s just almost impossible to do it all.”
This week’s news from Harris came amid a wider media blitz from the Vice President where the previously somewhat press-shy candidate appeared in an array of venues.
They ranged from the massively popular “Call Her Daddy” podcast — where she focused on reproductive rights — to a “60 Minutes” interview on CBS that covered national and international issues.
Plans aimed at working parents
Other “pillars” of Harris’s economic plans have been given their own week of focus — from the cost-of-living to entrepreneurship to manufacturing — but the care economy elements have been released more gradually with a fuller picture now in focus.
It was in August that Harris, as part of that cost-of-living plan, announced financial supports for parents in the form of a new $6,000 tax credit for the first year of a child’s life.
Then, in a September interview hosted by the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), Harris offered support for the notion of capping child care costs at 7% of working families’ incomes.
That aligns Harris with legislation Democrats are pushing on the issue that would use the tax system to lower the costs and provide new government grants to increase the supply of child care providers.
The cost would be worth it, Harris told the NABJ, because it allows more people to work. “It strengthens our economy to do things like pay attention to affordable child care, affordable home health care, and extending the child tax credit,” she said.
Harris offered a few more details in an 82-page summary of her economic plans released in recent weeks with a chapter focused on ideas for families “having to choose between the jobs they need and the people they love.”
This week’s focus: the ‘sandwich generation’
The focus this week was clearly on the so-called “sandwich generation” that Pew has defined as Americans in their 40s and 50s with responsibilities both for a parent aged 65 or older and a younger child (or financially supporting a grown child over 18).
The federal government — via the Medicare program — currently provides minimal assistance for things like home health aides for seniors. Democrats have long pushed to expand Medicare benefits but has fallen short, including in recent years during negotiations over the Biden/Harris “Build Back Better” agenda.
But Harris is now promising another run at the issue, promising a plan that covers home care “for all of our nation’s seniors and those with disabilities on Medicare who need it,” according to a campaign document.
Harris said she will pay for it with the savings from expanding Medicare’s power to negotiate prescription drug prices.
The Donald Trump campaign has also discussed home care benefits, including in a GOP platform that promised “Republicans will shift resources back to at-home Senior Care, overturn disincentives that lead to Care Worker shortages, and support unpaid Family Caregivers through Tax Credits and reduced red tape.”
On Tuesday, the Trump campaign charged that Harris was “once again following President Trump’s lead.”
The larger context is a battle for undecided voters, especially those focused on the perennial polling question of which candidate “cares about people like you.”
A new New York Times/Siena poll released Tuesday showed Harris with 8-point edge on the issue.
Of likely voters in that poll, 49% said it was Harris who cares more, while 41% said the same of Donald Trump.
Ben Werschkul is Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.
Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance