No, Senator Manchin — Americans cannot wait for paid leave

Vicki Shabo wrote for The Hill about Senator Manchin's resistance to enacting paid family and medical leave via Build Back Better:

Delay is misguided. If policymakers are serious about addressing Americans’ concerns about the rising costs of living, they’ll pass the country’s first national paid family and medical leave program as part of the Build Back Better Act with haste. Americans are already overwhelmingly supportive of national paid family and medical leave as part of the jobs, families, climate and care bill and concerns about costs should make them even more so.

Without paid leave, working people and families are forced to make difficult choices between paying bills and meeting their basic expenses and providing or receiving care. Deborah Davis of Ona, West Virginia recently wrote that when her second daughter, Rylee, was born with significant disabilities that kept her in the ICU for six weeks and in need of services for all of the 11 years she lived, Rylee’s dad had to return to work soon after her birth because “there was no medical leave and house, utility and grocery bills still loomed.” Davis had to learn to care for her daughter’s substantial needs on her own.