Listeners, every Thursday night during President Biden's first hundred days in office, I'm hosting a series of call-in specials called America, Are We Ready?

And we've been having such good discussions with our guests and with callers from across the country that we want to share them with you on this podcast feed.

So here's this past Thursdays, America, are we ready?

I'm Brian Lehrer.

This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios.

This is a Saturday special.

Here we are.

This is day 100. So folks, this is our last program. We will open the phone shortly for Day 100 end of series calls, but first a very special guest, because this is also the day after

President Biden's address to the nation last night, a state-of-the-union stylestyle address, but they don't call it that in a new

president's first year, in which he introduced his American family plan to help people pay for

child care and add four years of free public education to the old model of K-12. The plan has four

elements. First, it adds two years of free public pre-K and two years of free public community college.

Second thing we need, American Families Plan will provide access to quality affordable child care.

Low middle income families will pay no more than 7% of their income for high-quality care for children up to the age of five.

The most hard-pressed working families won't have to spend a dime.

Third, the American Families Plan will finally provide up to 12 weeks of paid leave and medical leave, family and medical leave.

No one should have to choose between a job and a paycheck or taking care of themselves and their loved ones or parent or spouse or child.

A few excerpts of what the President said last night and fourth, it would extend the child tax credit that's only

temporary so far. For most families, that would be $3,000 to $3,600 per child per year. Now, all this

adds up to more security and more equality for American families, as Biden sees it. Senator Tim Scott in the Republican

response saw it very differently. Tonight we also heard about a so-called family plan,

even more taxing, even more spending to put Washington even more in the middle of your

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