Tyrant Joe Biden Mobilizes Entire US Government To Help Working Families Find Care

Plus, it's Manchin-proof!

One of the things that impressed us about the Trump administration — in a horrible, sick-making way, to be sure — was that for all the stumblefucked incompetence at the top, which thank Crom might have saved us from even worse catastrophe, there were some operatives in the Trump White House who knew what they were doing, which was far more terrifying than the chaos. Stephen Miller, Trump's immigration Gauleiter, was something of a master of the Dark Bureaucratic Arts, leading a crew of likeminded creeps to sift through all sorts of federal laws and regulations to find ways to restrict immigration and keep refugees out of the USA. Miller and his operatives quickly weaponized large parts of the federal bureaucracy to pursue Trump's immigration agenda.

Read More:

 Stephen Miller, America's Last Bastion Against Humanity 

 Stephen Miller's Latest F*cked-Up Bullsh*t Is SOOOOOOME F*CKED-UP BULLSH*T 

But what if that power could be used for good, not evil? What if a president directed agencies to go through the laws and regulations to find ways to help working Americans get affordable family care, for young children and also for seniors who need home care? That's pretty much what Joe Biden is telling the federal government to do with an executive order signed today.

The EO, the White House explainers, 

includes more than 50 directives to nearly every cabinet-level agency to expand access to affordable, high-quality care, and provide support for care workers and family caregivers.

The order builds on that neat idea the administration came up with earlier this year that requires companies getting funding from the CHIPS and Science Act to include plans for making affordable childcare available to their workers. Nice factory we're helping you build here, sure would be great if your employees had childcare options.

The executive order, like the CHIPS rule, aimed at finding alternative ways of increasing the availability of family care after Joe Manchin had a tantrum and declared that working families couldn't have the Build Back Better act, which included funding for child care, assistance to seniors needing home care, and universal pre-kindergartento boot. Like similar orders that Barack Obama took on gun control — and on the evil side of the ledger, like Trump's attempts to build a border wall — the EO is intended to enact at least some of the president's agenda after Congress — or more precisely, one powerful 538th of it — blocked the more comprehensive legislation Biden had sought.

Previously:

 Socialist Joe Biden Forces Tech Companies To Provide Daycare Options To Get CHIPS Act $ 

 Washington Post Takes Us Inside Manchin Tantrum That Killed Build Back Better 

 Lady Dems Demand Job Rights For Nation's Wisecracking Maids, Nannies, Butlers 

 As the Washington Post explains (free guest link), shaking the administrative trees could certainly get some results:

The president’s new directive could open the door for similar rules governing a wider array of programs and spending packages, potentially including the roughly $1.2 trillion law enacted in 2021 to improve the nation’s roads, bridges, pipes, ports and internet connections.

Specifically, the administration is ordering Cabinet departments to start with the CHIPS Act model, to

[i]dentify which of their grant programs can support child care and long-term care for individuals working on federal projects, and consider requiring applicants seeking federal job-creating funds to expand access to care for their workers.

Other parts of the order have specific action in mind, like a directive for the Department of Veterans Affairs to find ways to expand access to home care services it already offers through a program that "provides veterans with a budget to hire personal care assistance including from family members."

Another provision directs the federal government to get its own childcare act together, ordering the Office of Personnel Management to review policies for providing child care subsidies for government employees, and to look into mandating standards for how all federal agencies help pay for employees' childcare.

Other parts of the order are aimed at leveraging federal agencies to improve care providers' pay, benefits, and job security. Health and Human Services, for instance, "will take steps to increase the pay and benefits for Head Start teachers and staff," and to improve reimbursements for child care providers in HHS's Child Care & Development Block Grant program.

HHS is also being directed to take similar efforts to improve the pay and benefits for long-term care workers, which will be good for the workers and provide more consistent care for people in nursing homes or home care. The EO

directs HHS to consider issuing several regulations and guidance documents to improve the quality of home care jobs, including by leveraging Medicaid funding to ensure there are enough home care workers to provide care to seniors and people with disabilities enrolled in Medicaid, as well as build on the minimum staffing standards for nursing homes and condition a portion of Medicare payments on how well a nursing home retains workers.

And because much elder care is provided by family members, HHS is being directed to test out

a new dementia care model that will include support for respite care (short-term help to give a primary family caregiver a break) and make it easier for family caregivers to access Medicare beneficiary information and provide more support to family caregivers during the hospital discharge planning process.

The employment rights of domestic workers, a longtime concern of VP Kamala Harris, also shows up in the order, with a directive for the Labor Department to develop

a sample employment agreement so domestic child care and long-term care workers and their employers can ensure both parties better understand their rights and responsibilities.

There's only so much that an executive order can accomplish without additional funding from Congress, of course, but sometimes all that's needed to upgrade the help people get is to reduce the amount of paperwork. Another For Instance, then: Since there are roughly a half million Native American and Alaska Native kids under age 13 — about half of them younger than five — the order asks HHS to streamline the process for awarding childcare and Head Start grants to tribes so they can build early childhood facilities.

Also too, let's put the Washington Post on diaper-hauling duty for a week for saying that the prospects for passing a care agenda in Congress are slim, since "spending-weary Republicans — now in charge of the House — have intensified in their opposition to new government social safety net programs." Those poor weary House Republicans! We should definitely relieve them of their heavy burden come 2024, when Biden will run for reelection on the platform of helping families. We should point out those sad sack do-nothings at every chance, and make sure they're sent home, wearily.

[ WaPo (guest link) / White House / Photo:  Ketut Subiyanto via Pexels, free license]

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