Rosa DeLauro

We need to make sure that the child tax credit will not go away, and that it will be permanent.

Failing to extend the child tax credit expansion for lower-income families means 12 million Americans will be plunged deeper in poverty.

By expanding the child tax credit, we can finally make a direct and a critical impact for all families with children.

This is beyond, beyond words. To listen to Vanessa, my God, I wish I could wrap my arms around you, Vanessa. You’ve told the story that we have been trying to tell for so, so many years and how transformative a child tax credit would be in…

Ensuring comprehensive paid leave for Federal workers through H.R. 56--564 would help lead the way for comprehensive paid family and medical leave for all American workers.

Not surprisingly, the vast majority of Americans, including most Republicans, support paid leave.

As our Nation seeks to recover from the pandemic, permanent comprehensive paid leave is essential to support workers and the families who depend on them.

Having a seriously ill child is not a perk. Taking time to deal with active-duty deployment is not a perk.

We needed paid leave long before the pandemic.

We have seen that countless families continue to suffer because our Nation still has no nationwide paid family and medical leave policy.

I was proud to vote for the Family and Medical Leave Act in 1994, which granted 12 weeks of unpaid leave.

Democrats have been fighting for years for comprehensive paid family and medical leave.

I look forward to working with you to make paid leave for all a reality.

But at the end of the day, this is about values that unite us like love, responsibility, dignity, and care.

Paid leave rewards work, strengthens people's attachment to the work force, and promotes employee retention.

As we emerge from a deadly health crisis that has exacerbated gender, racial, and economic disparities and weakened the work force, it is time for paid leave for all as a national priority.

The Biden/Harris administration and Democrats in Congress will continue to work to enact paid family and medical leave for all employees in the Federal Government and the private sector.

When President Biden announced it, I felt like I had died and gone to heaven.

Having a child is not a disability. It is a joy.

We are the greatest country in the world. Can't we respect our workers?

This is not a perk we are talking about.

Many women have sick children, and when they are sick, they need their mother.

I doubt that the women in the great state of Kentucky think that having a child is a, quote, 'perk.'

We need to put the American people first, not the special interest of Federal bureaucrats.

Today's hearing to consider expanding paid leave even further for Federal workers shows Democrats' priorities are incredibly distorted.