I'm Ryan Grimm and this is deconstructed. On Wednesday night, Joe Biden gave his first

presidential address to a joint session of Congress, though was sparsely attended so

that social distancing could be observed. Before we get to the substance of his speech,

we have a quick pet peeve. Basically every member of Congress and every Supreme Court

justice is vaccinated. Meanwhile, we have a national panic about people refusing to

be vaccinated. Wouldn't it have been good to have those seats packed with

vaccinated representatives just to show people across the country that this is why

you should get the jab so that you can go back to doing the things you did before

the pandemic started? That image would be worth more than a thousand

shamings. Instead, what message does an empty chamber send? That even if you do

get your vaccine, your life doesn't really change, that's absurd. And I think

Democrats need to do a better job showing people the benefits of vaccination

beyond the obvious benefit of not dying, of course. In any event, Biden was

there to pitch what he's calling the American Families Plan. And as our guest

Matt Brunig notes, support for families and children has long been a blind

spot in the United States. This is the area where the US welfare state lags

the rest of the world by the most. We really don't have child care benefits, we don't

have paid leave benefits. Raising kids today in the US is hard. Millions of

people get no paid parental leave. Daycare is insanely expensive and we do

close to nothing to help make it affordable. You're lucky if your school has

pre-K. Until Biden signed in a law a temporary refundable child tax credit,

there was little in the way of financial help for parents, even though they're

...