Paid family and medical leave is back in the House's version of the Democrats' domestic spending bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday—but since Sen. Joe Manchin hasn't changed his position, the odds of it making it into the final bill may be slim. The paid leave provision was cut from 12 weeks to four and then dropped altogether last week after opposition from the West Virginia senator, ABC reports. In a letter to colleagues, Pelosi acknowledged that she has been "informed by a Senator of opposition to a few of the priorities contained in our bill" and said "we must strive to find common ground in the legislation."
Manchin said Wednesday that he remains strongly opposed to including paid leave in the package, which is being passed through the budget reconciliation process. He said the paid leave proposal should be passed "in a bipartisan way." Manchin argued that the "unbelievable" Democratic losses in Virginia's elections show that Democrats should proceed cautiously with the package, the Hill reports. "We have a divided country that needs to be united and you can’t unite it by just doing it by one-party system," he said. Democrats won't be able to get the $1.75 trillion package through the Senate without Manchin's vote.
Other Democrats, however, blamed Terry McAuliffe's loss to Glenn Youngkin on the party's failure to move swiftly enough with the social spending bill and the infrastructure package. "Democratic inaction on these two big bills, delay on the two big bills, definitely hurt Terry," said Sen. Tim Kaine, a former Virginia governor, per Politico. "Dems have to use their majority to deliver." Pelosi's plan now seems to be to pass "the most robust bill possible in her chamber" and leave it to Manchin and other Senate centrists to remove the parts they oppose, the AP reports. Pelosi said Wednesday that she is "very sad" about the Virginia result but it was not the reason why the paid leave plan was reintroduced. (More spending bill stories.)
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