Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) (pictured), long one of the Senate’s most vocal advocate on health care and employee issues, is now calling for legislation that will require employers to provide basic health insurance and paid sick leave for their workforces.
Sen. Kennedy, who co-authored the comprehensive education reform bill recently signed into law by President Bush, also is a chief sponsor of pending legislation that would reform the managed health care system (“Patient’s Bill of Rights”). While the speech to the National Press Club on January 16 garnered national attention because Sen. Kennedy called for postponing a portion of the upcoming tax cuts, he also covered a number of topics that have been at the cornerstone of Kennedy family politics for over 40 years – namely, health care, poverty, civil rights, and worker protections.
Sen. Kennedy serves as the current Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, and in his speech he outlined an aggressive agenda for his committee for 2002. In addition to the tax cut deferment, Sen. Kennedy called for legislation that would require employers with more than 100 workers to offer basic health insurance to their employees. Noting that one out of every six working Americans has no health care coverage, he stated that lack of health insurance is the seventh leading cause of death in America. “America cannot have the best workforce in the world if we do not also have the healthiest workforce in the world,” he explained. “Our failure to guarantee health care is one of our greatest failures as a nation.” Sen. Kennedy also called on Congress to complete work on Patient’s Bill of Rights legislation, and to revise Medicare to provide prescription drug coverage to all senior citizens.
Sen. Kennedy also called for an increase in the federal minimum wage. He is a chief sponsor of legislation that would raise the minimum wage by 50 cents-per-hour immediately, and by another dollar-per-hour, to $6.45 over the next year. “The downturn in the economy has placed strains on the lives of many families. And, as wages stagnate, workers at the bottom suffer most. Americans earning the minimum wage . . . earn only $10,700 a year – nearly $4,000 below the poverty level for a family of three,” stated the Senator. “No one who works for a living should have to live in poverty.”
Sen. Kennedy also revived his support for a Clinton Administration proposal that would amend the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) to allow parents to take time off work to attend to "parenting activities" such as dental appointments and parent-teacher conferences. He also would expand FMLA to cover employers with 25 or more employees. He also called for legislation that would bar employers from discriminating against gay employees in hiring, firing, promotion and compensation.
