What's in Biden's American Families Plan

I tell you what senior administration officials told me

Photo by Probal Rashid/LightRocket via Getty Images

Today in line with Joe Biden’s first State of the Union address¹, he’s going to be announcing the details of what his administration is calling the American Families Plan — a sweep of enhancements to the welfare state mostly focused on children and education.

The plan, as described to me last night by senior administration officials, is really not what I’d call a unitary plan at all. It’s more like a grab-bag of ideas, loosely related by by theme of helping parents and children, and all lumped together because that’s how the budget reconciliation process works. The best way to take you through it, I think, is roughly chronologically in terms of a person’s life cycle.

Paid Leave: Biden wants to establish a program that will guarantee twelve weeks of paid leave to new parents and for other purposes.² The program will replace 80 percent of the wages of low-wage workers, phasing down to a 67 percent replacement rate and then maxing out at $4…