Paid Maternity Leave For Federal Employees Passes Despite GOP Obstructionism

To be honest, I hadn't heard anything about H.R. 626, Carolyn Maloney's Federal Employees Paid Parental Leave Act which she introduced so it would guarantee that 4 of the 12 weeks of parental leave made available to a Federal employee shall be paid leave. It's what you call real progressive legislation that directly impacts the lives of real live people and makes for a better and more equitable society. The way I found out about it was that I was on the phone talking about a national security issue with one of the bill's sponsors, Joe Sestak, when he said he had to run over and vote.

At 8 yesterday evening the Republicans tried killing the bill with a motion to recommit that failed 171-241, with 8 conservative Democrats kissing up to the Chamber of Commerce by voting with the GOP-- mostly the usual shitheads like Walt Minnick (Blue Dog-ID), Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX), Travis Childers (Blue Dog-MS), Bobby Bright (Blue Dog-AL), etc. Ten minutes later the landmark bill passed 258-154, with two dozen vulnerable Republicans too scared to voted with their anti-family leadership.

Basically what the bill will do is this: it allows "federal employees to substitute any available paid leave for any leave without pay available for either the: (1) birth of a child; or (2) placement of a child with the employee for either adoption or foster care. Makes available (subject to specified requirements) for any of the 12 weeks of leave an employee is entitled to for such purposes: (1) four administrative weeks of paid parental leave in connection with the birth or placement involved; and (2) any accumulated annual or sick leave."

Does that sound like something the GOP should be trying to obstruct? And yet, the Republican leadership did just that. First one of the worst of the GOP corporate shills, Darrell Issa (R-CA), offered an amendment to water it down. They would never water down anything that make the rich and powerful more rich and more powerful, but the idea of improving the lives of working families is enough to drive a Republican insane. 154 of them (and 3 bad Dems-- Minnick, Kosmas and Childers) voted for Issa's mean-spirited amendment, which failed 157-258. What kind of a sonofabitch would vote against paid leave? Well ask fake self-professed "moderates" like Mary Bono Mack (R-CA), Mike Castle (R-DE), Vernon Ehlers (R-MI) Charlie Dent (R-PA), Peter King (R-NY), Bill Young (R-FL) and Dave Camp (R-MI) who voted in lockstep with the worst right-wing extremists, from Michele Bachmann, Mean Jean Schmidt, Virginia Fox, Patty McHenry and Tom McClintock to garbage like Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan and Gary Miller.

No doubt some kind of hellish combination of the entire Senate Republican caucus plus Evan Bayh's anti-Obama Bloc of conservadems will find a way to stop this from ever becoming law. Or maybe they're so busy working full time on destroying health care reform that they won't have the energy for much else. In this morning's NY Times Krugman warned that the key to passing real reform is for Congress to not trust the predatory insurance industry. Not trust them? The Insurance has put so much into winning the trust of Congress-- $315,390,117 to be presice (not counting another $1,220,365,114 in lobbying-- in the last few years.

The average U.S. Senator has gotten $552,708 in direct "donations" from the Insurance industry since 1990. And if that seems like a lot, the members of the Senate who have been tasked with killing health care reform have gotten far more than the average. The insurance industry's top shills, or what Krugman calls "the insurance lobby’s foot soldiers in Congress," (not even counting ex-presidential candidates; of course McCain got more money than anyone):

Ben Nelson (D-NE)- $1,196,799
Max Baucus (D-MT)- $1,184,113
Joe Lieberman (I-CT)- $1,036,302
Arlen Specter (R-D- PA)- $1,035,530
Chuck Schumer (D-NY)- $981,400
Miss McConnell (R-KY)- $929,207
Chuck Grassley (R-IA)- $884,724
Kent Conrad (D-ND)- $824,837
Jim Bunning (R-KY)- $781,016
Orrin Hatch (R-UT)- $661,807

With the exception of Jim Bunning, who is senile, ineffective and looked at as the walking dead by his colleagues, expect this list of senators to wield the knives that murder health care reform on the Senate floor-- or in the cloak rooms-- with Schumer taking on the role of Brutus.

Be warned, however. The insurance industry will do everything it can to avoid being held accountable.

At first the insurance lobby’s foot soldiers in Congress tried to shout down the public option with the old slogans: private enterprise good, government bad.

At this point, however, they’re trying to kill the public option in more subtle ways. The most recent ruse is the proposal for a “trigger”-- the public option will only become available if private insurers fail to meet certain performance criteria. The idea, of course, is to choose those criteria to ensure that the trigger is never pulled.

And here’s the thing. Without an effective public option, the Obama health care reform will be simply a national version of the health care reform in Massachusetts: a system that is a lot better than nothing but has done little to address the fundamental problem of a fragmented system, and as a result has done little to control rising health care costs.

Right now the health insurers are promising to deliver major cost savings. But history shows that such promises can’t be trusted. As President Obama said in his letter, we need a serious, real public option to keep the insurance companies honest.