These are challenging times – I just saw my local gas station price for regular gasoline at $4.14/gallon. The combination of high grocery bills, astronomical health insurance bills, and generally inflated prices on almost everything makes it very difficult to make ends meet. The Virginia legislature is busy doing exactly what its elected officials said it was going to do, and try to make life more affordable. One interesting example is the recently passed bill establishing a paid family and medical leave insurance program.
For those depending on a regular paycheck, having a baby or having a health problem can be devastating. How can a woman have a baby and take care of her infant without a paycheck? For that matter, how can anyone dependent on a regular paycheck pay bills if they are unable to go to work? This new insurance program will provide up to 80 percent of someone’s average wage for up to 12 weeks. Regularly reported these days is how women aren’t having enough babies to keep our country’s population stable – certainly one obstacle is that many women and families can’t afford to have babies. This legislation should help.
Many bills are being passed with bipartisan support. For example, on April 27 Governor Spanberger signed 12 bipartisan bills focused on helping students and strengthening our schools. A number of bills authored or championed by Republicans have been passed, and signed. Clearly, both sides of the legislative aisle are being heard in Richmond (far different than the situation with the federal government). This bill providing family and medical leave did not receive bipartisan support however, showing an important distinction between political parties. The money to support this work, and to pay workers on maternal or medical leave, would come from businesses and workers contributing into a fund – the same way all insurance works. Republican legislators opposed establishing this fund, largely based on not wanting to impose more burdens on business. The Democratic interest is that it will help workers – most importantly those workers who earn just enough to get by. Our governor and legislature campaigned on helping workers, so passage should not be a surprise. That doesn’t mean that Republicans need to support this focus on helping workers, their priorities seem more focused on the businesses. Virginia voters are getting what they voted for – a more worker friendly state. Time will tell if this bill does adversely business in a way that will drive any away – a Republican concern
It’s important to recognize that our economy is unlikely to recover soon. I just saw numbers by the Bureau of Economic Analysis identifying the total debt held by the American public, $31.27 trillion, being greater than the nominal annual gross domestic product of $31.22 trillion. We now owe more than we produce annually! That hasn’t happened since World War II. We are hearing vastly different estimates of the cost of the war in Iran. The Pentagon reported that we have spent about $25 billion already, with a Democratic estimate that the true cost is between $630 billion and $1 trillion. Even at the lowest figure of $25 billion – that means we have spent about $200/household, and of course it could be much more and is growing fast. We will have to pay that money back – through taxes and payments on the very large and growing national debt. Workers barely getting by are going to find it exceedingly difficult to pay for this debt – and not having any income while they are sick or just had a baby could make their already challenging financial situation impossible. So, we can be glad that our Virginia legislature is working in a bipartisan fashion to enable all our representatives to have a meaningful role in government, while recognizing that the voters of Virginia overwhelmingly supported taking steps to help our working class.
