Charleston Gazette-Mail – Right now, Congress is considering a budget package that serves as an important companion to the negotiated bipartisan infrastructure package. Read the full op-ed.
Alongside much-needed investments in roads and bridges, it would address longstanding needs of workers and families in our state and around the country — things like paid family and medical leave, to ensure that no worker has to choose between their job and their health; investments in the child care and home health workforces; extension of the child tax credit, which has had immediate anti-poverty and food security effects across our state; and much more.
And yet, instead of talking about the life-changing effects of making the child tax credit permanent, ensuring that home health and child care providers earn a living wage, or of providing paid leave to all workers, much of the public debate so far has focused around a single number: the $3.5 trillion in gross new investments over the next decade that are expected to be included in the package.
