Election 2024: Colorado Senator campaigns in Nebraska for Kamala Harris

OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) - Supporters of Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris are in town today, pitching her plan to lower costs and provide financial relief for Nebraska families.

The Vice President’s plan calls for help to cover home care costs to families providing care for their elderly parents, and to help with the cost of raising a family.

Four-year-old Everly is one of the children at the Brighten Our Future Early Learning Center.

“We were just trying to find a center that was smaller because, our daughter is just very outgoing, and likes one-on-one attention,” Everly’s mother Stephanie Torres-Chan said. “Some of the smaller centers are just so expensive that we couldn’t justify it."

Everly’s mom and dad are part of the “Sandwich Generation”, they take care of little Everly and Everly’s grandfather.

“My husband and I just made the decision we’re going to sell our home, going into my parents home to help care for my father," Torres-Chan said. “He had a stroke so he is paralyzed, and my mother is his main caregiver, and we knew that we wanted to keep him home somewhere he’s familiar with."

Torres-Chan was at a news conference today, supporting Kamala Harris.

Politicians there talked about how Nebraska families are struggling with the rising cost of living, and the current Vice President has a plan to help.

“Kamala Harris’ plan would lower expenses for families with children by restoring a middle class tax cut that helped hundreds of thousands of Nebraskans make ends meet during the pandemic," Nebraska State Senator Wendy DeBoer said.

Sonita Buddi us the founder and CEO of Brighten Our Future Learning Center.

Here, parents pay on a sliding scale according to income.

“We do have a curriculum, its called ‘Creative Curriculum’," Buddi said. “It’s actually integrated into our child care app, so its very easy for our parents to be involved also... High quality early childhood education cannot just be for people who can afford to pay $10-12 thousand a year per child. We have to bridge that gap."

Colorado Senator Michael Bennet, also at the news conference, pitched the Harris plan to expand the child tax credit that helped many middle-class parents.

“90 percent of the kids in Nebraska benefited, 90 percent of the kids in Colorado benefited from it, and we want to make it permanent,” Sen. Bennet said. “That’s what the Vice President said on the debate stage with Donald Trump."

Everly’s mom told 6 News the child tax credit really helped their family, and they’re hoping to see that credit in years to come.

“We actually use our child tax credit that we received, and we put it all towards day care cost for the following year,” Torres-Chan said. “So, we just put it in a saving account and we just use that to pay for the upcoming year of daycare. That helped tremendously in the couple of years we did get the child tax credit.”

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