Joseph R. Biden Jr. will announce a sweeping new $775 billion investment in caregiving programs on Tuesday, with a series of proposals covering care for small children, older adults and family members with disabilities.
The speech, near his home in Wilmington, Del., will be the third of four economic rollouts that Mr. Biden, the former vice president and presumptive Democratic nominee, is doing before the Democratic National Convention next month. He is seeking to blunt one of the few areas of advantage — the economy — that President Trump maintains even as Mr. Trump’s overall standing has dipped.
Mr. Biden’s plans are intended to appeal to voters who are now more acutely aware of how essential caregivers are, as a health crisis has shuttered schools — a source of child care for many Americans — and limited the options to care for older relatives who are more vulnerable to the coronavirus.
But they are also aimed at the caregivers themselves, promising more jobs and higher pay. His campaign estimated that the new spending would create three million new jobs in the next decade, and even more after accounting for people able to enter the work force instead of serving as unpaid, at-home caregivers.
In a conference call outlining the plan on Monday night, the Biden campaign framed the issues as an economic imperative to keep the country competitive globally, and to enable it to recover from the economic crisis brought on by the pandemic. The United States is the only rich country without paid family leave and has no universal child care; research has shown that labor force participation has stalled because of that.
In other news from around the United States:
- Hidalgo County, Texas, where new cases have been on the rise, issued a shelter-at-home order and a 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew to help stem the spread of the virus. The order goes into effect on Wednesday.
- Mr. Trump is set to resume his live virus briefings starting at 5 p.m. Tuesday, attributing his decision not to the increasing threat of the pandemic but to the fact that the briefings had high television ratings. The country’s top infectious disease doctor, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, who has been sidelined by the president in recent months, told NPR he expects to be “at least in on some of it.”
- The beverage giant Coca-Cola reported a big drop in revenue and profit in the second quarter as many consumers remained at home during the pandemic.
- The Citi Open in Washington, which was scheduled to relaunch the men’s tennis tour next month, has been canceled for 2020. The tournament was set to begin on Aug. 14 and serve as a lead-in event for the United States Open.
FEATURED IMAGE: Joseph R. Biden Jr. during an address in Wilmington, Del., last week. Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York Times
The New York Times
