74-Year-Old Man Blocks Universal Paid Leave: It was Sen. Joe Manchin.

1
A 74-year-old man is blocking Congress from providing American workers with paid family and medical leave, leaving the United States as the only industrialized nation without such a mandate.

On Wednesday, Senate Democrats said they would have to drop the provision from their Build Back Better legislation because they were unable to convince Joe Manchin from West Virginia to get on board.

“The fact that this one older white gentleman, who perhaps has never had to contend with family caregiving or the risk of losing his job or being unable to pay his bills, could stand in the way of paid leave for nearly 20 million people a year is shocking and upsetting,” said Vicki Shabo, senior fellow at the New America Foundation.

Democrats have had to significantly pare back their plans for the Build Back Better tax and spending legislation after Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) made clear they would not support a package as large as $3.5 trillion over 10 years, as President Joe Biden initially proposed.

The final number is expected to be under $2 trillion. And to get there, Democrats had to eliminate, or trim, much-sought programs.

As HuffPost reported, Manchin privately expressed concern about the cost of offering paid leave, as well as the potential for fraud.

Democrats had been trying to scale back their proposal to meet the cost constraints and satisfy Manchin. It went from offering 12 weeks of leave to just four. Then there were discussions about leaving out sick leave. But ultimately, they were unable to reach an agreement and communicated as much to their House colleagues Wednesday afternoon.

Still, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who had been working on the compromise, was trying to hold out hope Wednesday. She said Manchin was still “looking over the details.”

Manchin, however, said the Build Back Better package was not the place for it.

“I’m looking at everything but to put this into a reconciliation bill — it’s a major policy — is not the place to do it,” Manchin told HuffPost.

Just 23% of private sector workers have access to paid family leave provided by their employer and 42% have access to medical leave.

Universal paid leave would allow workers to take time off for a new child, recovery from an illness, taking care of a seriously ill family member or issues arising from a loved one’s military deployment.

Unless Biden is able to address paid leave in some other form, former President Donald Trump will have made more progress on the issue. In 2019, he signed the Federal Employee Paid Leave Act, giving an estimated 2 million federal employees access to 12 weeks of paid parental leave.

Supporters were especially frustrated that the possibility of a federal paid leave mandate was killed after the pandemic made so clear how essential it is for workers to be able to take time off without losing their jobs.

“I think it’s horrific that one white man can make this decision,” said Dawn Huckelbridge, director of Paid Leave for All. “But I think it’s also a failure of our entire government. This should have been a monumental legacy we could have left the American people in a time of need. And this could have been a cornerstone program that would have helped every working family in this country. And we’ve squandered that opportunity.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-manc ... d93319c8dc

He doesn't have to worry as the Congress Critters have great benefits including paid leave. His attitude to even his citizens in West Virginia would be what we saw back in the early to mid 20th century. You go work in my coal mines and shop in my company store and never get out of debt. When, not if, you get injured in the mine tough luck for you.

The Elected Congress Critters and their immediate family should have the same government benefits as the lowest paid worker in the United States.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: 74-Year-Old Man Blocks Universal Paid Leave: It was Sen. Joe Manchin.

2
Trying to remember... But recently I think I caught something about Hillary Clinton saying something to the effect of... I think its time for the next generation to govern. I can't remember where I saw it, or the context...driving me crazy now.

But its hard to disagree. Now I'm Gen-X (barely), and IMO Gen-X is still a bit on the crazy side. I say skip Gen-X and go straight to Gen-Y and give them a shot. 'Cause God knows the Boomers aren't doing such a great job.
“I think there’s a right-wing conspiracy to promote the idea of a left-wing conspiracy”

Re: 74-Year-Old Man Blocks Universal Paid Leave: It was Sen. Joe Manchin.

3
FrontSight wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 1:29 pm Trying to remember... But recently I think I caught something about Hillary Clinton saying something to the effect of... I think its time for the next generation to govern. I can't remember where I saw it, or the context...driving me crazy now.

But its hard to disagree. Now I'm Gen-X (barely), and IMO Gen-X is still a bit on the crazy side. I say skip Gen-X and go straight to Gen-Y and give them a shot. 'Cause God knows the Boomers aren't doing such a great job.
Too many of the Boomers took the saying, "If you are not a Communist at 21 you have no heart, If you are a Communist at 45 you have no brain" and still wound up with no brain. Gen-X is my BIL and they are Semi-Trumpers.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: 74-Year-Old Man Blocks Universal Paid Leave: It was Sen. Joe Manchin.

4
I would love to see term limits on Elected officials, 4 terms as a senator 10 as a House Representative and Federal Judges 30 years with mandatory retirement age of 70 years old for all.
Also strong limits on Campaign funding.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: 74-Year-Old Man Blocks Universal Paid Leave: It was Sen. Joe Manchin.

5
TrueTexan wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 1:58 pm I would love to see term limits on Elected officials, 4 terms as a senator 10 as a House Representative and Federal Judges 30 years with mandatory retirement age of 70 years old for all.
Also strong limits on Campaign funding.
Preach on brother!!!

We need a to create a situation where our lawmakers don't answer directly to corporations; because their job is to stand up to the corporations on behalf of America. That just doesn't happen these days.

Citizens United and McCutcheon both need to be address with legislation to firmly set the limits on a corporation.
“I think there’s a right-wing conspiracy to promote the idea of a left-wing conspiracy”

Re: 74-Year-Old Man Blocks Universal Paid Leave: It was Sen. Joe Manchin.

6
FrontSight wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 2:25 pm
TrueTexan wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 1:58 pm I would love to see term limits on Elected officials, 4 terms as a senator 10 as a House Representative and Federal Judges 30 years with mandatory retirement age of 70 years old for all.
Also strong limits on Campaign funding.
Preach on brother!!!

We need a to create a situation where our lawmakers don't answer directly to corporations; because their job is to stand up to the corporations on behalf of America. That just doesn't happen these days.

Citizens United and McCutcheon both need to be address with legislation to firmly set the limits on a corporation.
Unfortunately that won't happen when you have the majority of the politicians owned by the corporation and the wealthy. Here we thought slavery was outlawed in the US. There must have been a secret clause that allowed the wealthy and corporations to own the elected politicians.

Interesting footnote how corporations became people.
An 1886 headnote forever shifted the meaning of the 14th Amendment.
Corporations aren’t specifically mentioned in the 14th Amendment, or anywhere else in the Constitution. But going back to the earliest years of the republic, when the Bank of the United States brought the first corporate rights case before the Supreme Court, U.S. corporations have sought many of the same rights guaranteed to individuals, including the rights to own property, enter into contracts, and to sue and be sued just like individuals.

But it wasn’t until the 1886 case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Rail Road that the Court appeared to grant a corporation the same rights as an individual under the 14th Amendment. The case is remembered less for the decision itself—the state had improperly assessed taxes to the railroad company—than for a headnote added to it by the court reporter at the time, which quoted Chief Justice Morrison Waite as saying: “The Court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution which forbids a state to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does.”

In later cases, this headnote would be treated as an official part of the verdict, and Waite’s conclusion reaffirmed in subsequent decisions by the Court, from an 1888 case involving a steel-mining company to the 1978 Bellotti decision, which granted corporations the right to spend unlimited funds on ballot initiatives as part of their First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

In the 2010 case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC), the most sweeping expansion of corporate rights yet, the Supreme Court cited Bellotti in its highly controversial 5-4 ruling that political speech by corporations is a form of free speech that is also covered under the First Amendment. In 2014’s Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, another 5-4 ruling by the Court granted the right of closely-held companies, which aren’t traded on the stock market, to file for exemptions to federal laws on religious grounds.

The legacy of the 14th amendment.
Not everyone agrees with this expanding interpretation of corporate personhood. In his dissent in Bellotti, Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote that corporations were “artificial” persons rather than “natural” persons, and that granting them the right to political expression could “pose special dangers in the political sphere.” Along similar lines, Justice John Paul Stevens argued in his dissent to Citizens United that “Corporations…are not themselves members of ‘We the People’ by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.” And soon after the ruling, then-President Barack Obama said in his State of the Union address that the decision would “open the floodgates for special interests—including foreign corporations—to spend without limit in our elections.”
https://www.history.com/news/14th-amend ... nto-people
And people became serfs to the corporate lords.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 3 guests