It’s Time to Think Beyond the Tax Code for Care Infrastructure

Tuesday was Tax Day, when businesses and families across the country apply for caregiver tax credits. Whether it’s childcare or long-term care for seniors and adults with disabilities, each of us needs caregiving in our lifetimes, and it’s one of the largest expenses for many US families. While some benefit from our patchwork system of tax relief for care expenses, many others don’t meet eligibility requirements. This broken system is forcing individuals out of the workforce, widening economic inequality (especially along racial and gender lines), and preventing people from living their fullest lives.

In a new report, Roosevelt Fellow Indivar Dutta-Gupta argues that prioritizing direct spending—rather than politically traditional tax-based policies—is the only way to meaningfully address the care crisis. In a moment when a meaningful overhaul of tax policy is likely out of reach and direct government spending is facing devastating cuts, this report advances an alternative vision for the government’s approach to funding care.

“Not only can [direct spending] ensure that our care systems reach everyone who needs care,” Dutta-Gupta explains, “but it permits a comprehensive strategy that may be likelier to garner strong public support, as it addresses the diverse needs of families across different socioeconomic backgrounds and geographies.”

Though generally underfunded, direct spending programs already exist and include well-known programs such as Head Start and Medicaid Home and Community-Based Services. Crucially, they can do a lot that tax-based programs can’t, including implementing mechanisms to ensure the quality of care, investing in the caregiving workforce, and providing equitable access to care services.

“Prioritizing public investment in caregiving through direct federal spending is not just a matter of economic fairness,” Dutta-Gupta writes. “It is an economic imperative.”

Read the report: “Direct Spending on Care Work: Thinking Beyond the Tax Code for Caregiving Infrastructure”

In Case You Missed It: Paul Krugman Joins Roosevelt

The Roosevelt Institute welcomed Nobel Prize–winning economist Paul Krugman as a senior fellow this week, kicking off his tenure in a video conversation with Roosevelt President and CEO Elizabeth Wilkins.

“There’s nothing like actually doing good to build trust,” Krugman said. “If we can find our way past the current turmoil, I think that there’s an underlying reservoir of optimism still in America. And if we can get our way past this, all of these things that led us to this rather scary moment, then a few years of good governance can actually do wonders.”

What We're Talking About

What We're Reading

• Specific economic indicators—low consumer confidence, unstable bond markets, and falling gas prices—have economists worried that the United States may already be in a recession.
  • “Whether two or three months from now, we’re looking back and saying, ‘Was the US in a recession or not?’ will be a really important question,” Roosevelt Principal Economist Michael Madowitz told Vox. “But also, it’s completely reasonable to be like, ‘I don’t need to wait for those answers to understand if my local economy is getting worse.’”
• Roosevelt Senior Fellow and Resident Historian David B. Woolner outlined how the world order created by Franklin D. Roosevelt is under threat for TIME magazine.
• Inequality.org reviewed Malcolm Harris’s book What’s Left: Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis, which outlines strategies for progressives to work together to combat the climate crisis.