Sens. Durbin, Villivalam back unpaid caregivers
Earned Income Tax Credit expansion sought to recognize ‘the reality of family’
Caring for a young child or an older parent can cause economic hardship for working families. (Creative Commons)
By Ted Cox
Two Illinois senators led calls Thursday for the state to “redefine work” and recognize “the reality of family” by granting aid to unpaid caregivers.
In an issue being felt across generations and across the state, especially during the pandemic, more people are leaving the workforce to care for either young children or elderly parents — or other family members — and suffering the economic costs.
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and state Sen. Ram Villivalam of Chicago joined a Care for Caregivers Virtual Town Hall Thursday sponsored by groups seeking expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit as one way to provide those workers some relief.
Durbin pointed out that many people face a harsh economic choice at some point in their lives — or multiple times — in caring for either a young child or old parent who requires care with “very few avenues to pursue” if they can’t find anyone to fill the job professionally.
“How can we provide a decent compensation for caregivers so that they aren’t driven further into poverty?” Durbin said. “How do we provide the basics?” He said that issue reflects “the reality of family,” adding, “We almost act as if this never happens.”
Calling it “a crisis in providing quality care,” especially in the midst of a pandemic, Villivalam said, “We have not done the job we need to do on child care for some time.”
Krystal Peters said she’d had to give up work as a certified nursing assistant to care for a toddler and her own mother, all while she had two daughters return home from college in the pandemic and two other members of the extended family died from COVID-19. “I was faced with a lot of challenges,” she said. “It’s needed for us, very much so.”
Dianne Munevar, of the nonpartisan and objective research organization NORC at the University of Chicago, said it’s typical for someone to be put in a “sandwich” situation between caring for children and parents. The pandemic has increased the number of people experiencing that, for instance in treating family members with COVID-19, and she added that estimates may be low that it now affects 30 percent of the workforce or 40 million Americans. “It’s an everybody issue, and everybody needs to be more emphathetic,” she said.
Dianne Munevar speaks during Thursday’s virtual town hall on unpaid caregivers. (Zoom)
Abe Scarr, director of the Illinois Public Interest Research Group, said he’d grown up in a household caring for a grandfather with emphysema — a result of picking up smoking while serving as a doctor in World War II — and now had to deal with child care for his own children, care that was unpredictably canceled from time to time during the pandemic. Calling it “a great and growing need,” he said, “We think it’s time to redefine work and life support for the many different ways that Americans contribute to their community that may not be captured by the Gross Domestic Product or the bottom line, and that should start with work done by unpaid caregivers.”
The question is how, and the answer provided by members of the panel was through expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit. It provides low-income workers with what amounts to a tax rebate on the deductions they’ve seen over the year, and expansion of the eligibility and amounts refunded would provide some relief.
According to Durbin, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio has submitted a national EITC expansion bill that would affect millions in Illinois. Another bill pending in the Illinois General Assembly would provide up to $1,500 to cover expenditures in caring for a family member.
Villivalam said the choice sometimes was between “putting people in a nursing home versus keeping people in their homes,” where they’d be allowed “independence and dignity,” but that latter option also makes fiscal sense in that “obviously it costs the state less.” He also advocated expansion of the Child Care Assistance Program on the way to providing universal child care.
Scarr said the pandemic provided an opportunity to “reconsider what we value,” and that it’s critical to “include unpaid caregivers” in the EITC.
All emphasized the experience is shared by most if not all Illinoisans at some point in their lives and they require some form of relief.
“There’s a narrative that’s spun out there that people are looking for a bailout, states are looking for a bailout,” Villivalam said. “They’re only asking for a hand up and a push forward, not a handout.
“This is about people’s stories, the real-life impact that they’re having,” Villivalam sid. “Walk a day in their shoes and you’ll understand what they’re going through.”