Hillary Clinton to propose tax credit for caregivers

This fall, Keith F. Thompson met Hillary Clinton and told her his story.

Dubbed the “the caregiving credit”, it will be the latest in a wide series of tax cuts, which Clinton is aiming to middle-class families to help boost their take-home pay.

The statement came in response to a pair of initiatives put forward by Clinton on Sunday that would benefit people who care for an elderly parent or other family member. “Clinton believes that it is time to reform our tax policies, Social Security system, and work-family policies, to support paid and unpaid caregivers and to recognize their fundamental contributions to families and to America”.

“One thing we should not do”, Clinton said, “is follow a proposal that has been made by one of my opponents that would eliminate all of the health care program and private employer health care and Medicare, and Medicaid and Tricare and all of it, and put all of that together and would turn providing health care over to the states”. Last week, she put forward a tax credit for families and individuals facing major health care costs.

Clinton, who will discuss the proposal at a town hall meeting in Des Moines Sunday, has made family care issues part of her outreach to women and middle-class families.

Clinton has previously called for the extension of the American Opportunity Tax Credit to help with college affordability and the creation of a new tax credit to help people deal with the rising out-of pocket healthcare costs.

Clinton has said she supports paid family leave but has not embraced a bill introduced by Kirsten Gillibrand, Clinton’s successor as a senator from NY, that dozens of progressive lawmakers have lined up behind in both chambers of Congress. Bernie Sanders and former governor Martin O’Malley, have declined to make. “Well, I don’t want to see your taxes go up; I want to see your health-care costs go down”. She regularly tells the story of Keith F. Thompson, a New Hampshire supporter who takes his mother to work with him because she has Alzheimer’s and he can’t afford a caregiver. In 2015, the program received $2 million in federal dollars.

“As President, I will be proud to stand with SEIU and fight alongside them-to defend workers’ right to organize and unions’ right to bargain collectively, to raise incomes for working people and the middle class, and to ensure that hardworking Americans can retire with dignity and security”, Clinton said in a statement released by her campaign.