Nov 15, 2021
More help is hopefully coming to American families. The House recently passed the $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan and sent it to President Joe Biden's desk to be signed into law. Although the plan is smaller than President Biden's original American Jobs Plan, the bill still makes historic investments in jobs and infrastructure.
To break it down, in the spring, President Biden released his two major policy initiatives; the American Jobs Plan that invests in traditional infrastructure, and the American Families Plan that invests in the care economy. Now, months later, the infrastructure bill has been signed into law by President Biden making needed investments in roads and bridges. However, the legislature is still negotiating Biden's care economy plan. Biden recently released a new agenda for his American Families Plan branding it the "Build Back Better Framework" that eliminates many of his original proposals in the hopes of finding a compromise so the House and Senate will pass his full agenda before the end of 2021.
READ MORE HERE >>
Nov 14, 2021
Two weeks of paid leave would have bought Edmund Vance enough time to seek treatment without losing his job. He didn't get it.
Instead, Vance, 29, was forced to leave his job at a coal mine for a two-week treatment program.
He's now more than four years sober, but when he came back from treatment a host of new challenges were waiting for him. He took a job at a landscaping firm that paid less than half of what he earned in the mines. Medical costs for his three kids mounted, and childcare needs kept his wife, JoAnna, from working. The Vances had emerged from substance-abuse disorder, but they'd entered a yearslong struggle to regain their financial footing.
READ MORE HERE >>
Nov 12, 2021
US Congress has approved a potentially history-making paid family leave plan as part of a larger social spending bill.
If the “Build Back Better” plan can now survive a Senate vote and be passed into law—and if Democrats can protect the already-pared down paid family leave program from further trimming—it would be a political win not just for the Biden administration and its Democratic supporters, but also for women’s groups that have fought for this benefit for years, knowing women still disproportionately shoulder the burden of unpaid family care.
READ MORE HERE >>
Nov 03, 2021
Democrats and advocates for paid family leave were handed a victory in the fight for a national plan on Wednesday, one day after they held a day-long press conference outside of the Capitol building to rally support for the issue.
The proposed plan for four weeks of paid leave is getting added back into the Build Back Better legislation, after it had been cut from the $1.75 trillion proposal due to some leaders’ concerns about the high costs such a program would entail.
On Wednesday, Democratic leaders, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., announced that paid leave was re-attached to the measure.
READ MORE HERE >>
Nov 02, 2021
A proposal for a national paid family leave program has been dropped from proposed Build Back Better legislation.
But the fight for a policy addressing the issue is not over, judging by activity Tuesday on Capitol Hill.
House Ways and Means Republicans held a hearing on paid leave and child care. Elsewhere, Democratic leaders, including Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., appeared at an all-day press conference with the goal of reinserting the proposal back into the bill.
President Joe Biden had proposed 12-week national paid leave. Under his measure, the federal government would help cover a portion of employees’ salaries.
READ MORE HERE >>
Nov 01, 2021
Democrats are closing in on a deal to lower prescription drug prices that the party could potentially shoehorn into their reconciliation package.
But paid family and medical leave — a cornerstone of President Joe Biden’s campaign that was dropped from the spending agreement last week — has had no such luck.
The main reason? Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a key Senate holdout who has remained immune to a tidal wave of efforts attempting to sway him on the issue.
Advocates spent their weekend trying to move the needle in any way they could. Dozens gathered in Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s New York neighborhood Sunday morning armed with banners, signs and sidewalk chalk. And plans to fly a banner over a donor retreat Manchin was hosting at the Greenbrier resort Sunday were thwarted only when weather prevented the pilot from getting off the ground. A radio spot from Paid Leave for the U.S. started playing in West Virginia this weekend and will run into this week.
READ MORE HERE >>
Oct 31, 2021
Jessi Garman, the mother of 3-year-old twin girls, has been searching for a job while also trying to have a third child with her husband, who’s in the military. Optimistic that Congress finally would approve paid family medical leave, she thought the time seemed right.
But that was before opposition by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia torpedoed the proposal. Both having another baby and getting full-time work doesn’t seem feasible now, and Garman’s hopefulness has turned into anger.
“It almost feels personal because Joe Manchin is my senator,” said Garman, of Milton.
READ MORE HERE >>
Oct 31, 2021
Meghan Markle continues to advocate for paid leave in the United States while helping others.
The Duchess of Sussex, 40, provided $25 Starbucks gift cards for employees of the nonprofit PL+US, which is working to win paid family and medical leave for all in the U.S. by 2022. The gift cards were supplied through her and Prince Harry's nonprofit, the Archewell Foundation.
Neil Sroka, communications director for PL+US, posted a screenshot of his gift card to Twitter, expressing his gratitude for the mother of two. "The Duchess of Sussex (aka #MeghanMarkle) bought everyone at @PaidLeaveUS a few cups of coffee while we're working overtime to #SavePaidLeave. Unbelievably classy... and necessary. Truly honored to know she has our backs in the fight to win #PaidLeaveForAll," he wrote.
READ MORE HERE >>
Oct 31, 2021
Democrats risk disappointing female voters by cutting out a major expansion of paid family and medical leave from a compromise social policy bill.
President Biden campaigned on extending paid leave to working women and men and initially proposed 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave as part of his sweeping domestic agenda.
But the proposal was whittled down to four weeks and eventually cut entirely from the package because of opposition from centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).
READ MORE HERE >>
Oct 29, 2021
How did President Joe Biden's promised 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave in the initially proposed Build Back Better plan get whittled down to four weeks and then, because that was somehow still too much, get cut out completely?
To put things into perspective, the United States is the only industrialized nation without a federal paid leave mandate, though some states—like California, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and the District of Columbia—do have paid leave plans in place. According to data from the World Policy Analysis Center at the University of California, the global average for paid maternity leave is 29 weeks and the average paid paternity leave is 16 weeks.
READ MORE HERE >>
Oct 28, 2021
Democrats are expected to drop their paid family and medical leave proposal from President Joe Biden's spending bill, in the face of unrelenting opposition from Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.
Biden has pushed for months to include a 12-week paid leave provision in the bill but Manchin repeatedly balked at the plan. Democrats in recent days tried to cut the proposal to just four weeks but Manchin shot the compromise offer down as well. Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Patty Muray, D-Wash., confronted Manchin on the Senate floor on Wednesday to press him to agree to some sort of compromise but Manchin told reporters that he can't support the legislation.
"I just can't do it," Manchin said Wednesday, raising concerns about deficits and debt even though Democrats aim to pay for everything in the bill with revenue increases.
READ MORE HERE >>
Oct 28, 2021
The White House released a $1.75 trillion social spending framework on Thursday morning, outlining the proposals that have made it into the latest, whittled-down version of President Joe Biden's cornerstone economic package.
The framework includes $400 billion for universal preschool and funding to make childcare more affordable. However, one key provision is nowhere to be found: Paid family and medical leave.
"It is outrageous that we are here in the midst of a global pandemic — and shecession — with Senate leaders and the White House having put forward this preliminary legislative deal without paid family and medical leave," Molly Day, the executive director of advocacy group PL+US: Paid Leave for the United States, told Insider.
READ MORE HERE >>
Oct 27, 2021
When Khrista Messinger, a 46-year-old who works for the City of Charleston, W.Va., requested time off from work to seek treatment for her substance abuse addiction she was told by her employer that she needed to use her sick leave and vacation time.
“I’ve been an addict most of my adult life and I decided to seek treatment once I finally saved up enough vacation and sick hours. You can’t go into recovery and not be paid,” said Messinger, during a phone interview with The Well News.
Data shows that while 20 million Americans are negatively affected by substance use and addiction, only 10% seek treatment.
READ MORE HERE >>
Oct 26, 2021
California advocates for paid family leave are walking back expectations that the federal Build Back Better Act could expand the state’s existing benefit.
In 2002, California became the first state to create a family leave benefit. Employees here can take up to eight partially paid weeks a year to care for family or bond with a child.
The Biden Administration’s original goal of 12 weeks paid family and medical leave would have boosted the state’s policy. Now, Democrats are reportedly fighting to keep at least four weeks in the bill as intraparty negotiations continue.
READ MORE HERE >>
Oct 26, 2021
Congressional leaders are considering slashing it from the Build Back Better package entirely, while according to PL+US: Paid Leave for the United States, President Biden is still working to reach an agreement to include paid leave albeit reduced from 12 weeks to just four weeks. According to PL+US, over 100 million people in this country don’t have a single day of paid leave, 1 in 4 American women return to work within 10 days of giving birth, and less than 1 in 4 men have access to paternity leave. Low-wage workers are the least likely to have access to family leave. As PL+US Executive Director Molly Day shared, this is an opportunity to “guarantee that all working people can be there for their families during life’s most important moments.”
LISTEN HERE >>
Oct 25, 2021
Democrats on Capitol Hill are reducing the total price tag for their social spending plan as they work to get it across the finish line in the coming days.
One casualty is the duration of paid family leave.
President Joe Biden had proposed federal 12-week paid family and medical leave as part of his American Families Plan. However, as the package makes its way through Congress, the size of that proposal is getting scaled down.
READ MORE HERE >>
Oct 21, 2021
The agency authorized Covid-19 boosters of Moderna’s and Johnson & Johnson’s vaccines, in a long-awaited move that will make millions more Americans eligible for the additional shots.
The Wednesday announcement sets the stage for a major expansion of the Biden administration’s booster campaign this fall, POLITICO’s Lauren Gardner reports. Moderna recipients would be eligible for a third shot if they’re 65 and older, or 18–64 and at high risk of severe Covid-19 or at risk of frequent exposure to the virus. That’s similar to the guidance FDA issued for Pfizer-BioNTech’s booster last month.
READ MORE HERE >>
Oct 21, 2021
The next phase of the quest to vaccinate America is ramping up.
Public health officials are hammering out plans to vaccinate children. CDC advisers are set to debate who should get Moderna and Johnson & Johnson’s booster shots. And federal regulators are strongly considering greenlighting extra doses for people as young as 40.
Vaccine providers may once again see more people clamoring to get shots all at once. The simultaneous efforts come as the pace of immunization has slowed in recent months, with just over 57 percent of Americans fully vaccinated. But now, beleaguered public health officials are in planning mode again, as experts hash out thorny questions about who should get the shots.
READ MORE HERE >>
