Kirsten Gillibrand

We have been fighting for nearly a decade to deliver VA healthcare and benefits to the Blue Water Navy veterans exposed to Agent Orange.

That doesn't make any sense.

It is my sincere hope that now that an offset has been identified and passed the House 382 to ZERO, that we may also quickly pass this bill and send it to President Trump as expeditiously as possible.

I think this is an injustice that we can and must rectify, and I think we can do it in this Congress.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Ranking Member. I am very grateful for your leadership.

I am so excited about the ABLE Act. We are beginning to make progress.

Well, they used to be able to provide banking and did it for a very long time, decades and decades.

One idea to address that is this idea of postal banking because we have so many post offices in every part of the country.

The last issue, if Madam Chairman does not mind me raising it, is this issue of access to banking.

You want to earn at your fullest potential.

The rate for persons with a disability of unemployment is 9.2 percent for 2017. That is double the national rate.

People want to work, and I thought that quote was really important. And I think people with disabilities desperately want to work.

I am very concerned that this Administration is intentionally trying to make it more difficult for States and localities to use low interest Federal loans for major transit projects.

This approach makes it more difficult to build major transit projects and could end up making those projects more expensive.

American families can and should have paid family leave and a secure retirement.

We should be crediting time out of the workforce caring for family members towards the calculation of Social Security, not forcing women to reduce their earned Social Security benefits even further for the invaluable, but monetarily…

Protecting and expanding Social Security's retirement, disability, and survivor benefits, while also providing working families with paid family and medical leave is a matter of political will and values, not affordability.

The Family and Medical Insurance Leave (FAMILY) Act (S. 337/H.R. 947), sponsored by Representative Rosa DeLauro and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand does just that.

The FAMILY Act, sponsored by Senator Gillibrand, would create a self-sustaining national paid family and medical leave insurance system.

The FAMILY Act would allow for working individuals to take paid time off, and would not discriminate based on gender or the nature of their job.

As Congress continues discussions and drafts legislation to provide for paid leave, we would recommend that it leverage the private insurance industry as you move forward.

I look forward to this hearing today as the beginning of what I hope will be a robust bipartisan conversation that soon leads to a national paid leave solution.

Parental leave is not even half of what's needed.

No one should be kept from seeing their baby's first smile, whether at home or in the NICU.

America's need for paid leave is well-established and clear--and need doesn't distinguish by political party, or family type, or care need.