Mitch McConnell has been out on paid leave since June 14. That's over seven weeks. He's collected roughly $20,000 in salary the entire time, full benefits included, without casting a single vote.
Here's the part that should make your blood boil.
In 1993, McConnell voted against the Family and Medical Leave Act, the law that gives workers 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave to recover from illness or care for a new baby. Unpaid. He voted no anyway.
In 2020, in the middle of a pandemic that was killing thousands of Americans a week, McConnell personally blocked an effort to extend paid family and sick leave in a COVID relief bill.
In 2022, he voted against guaranteeing railway workers seven measly days of paid sick leave, the exact policy that pushed rail workers to the brink of a nationwide strike.
For over 30 years, McConnell has made sure that if you get sick, if you have a baby, if your body needs time to heal, you're on your own. No pay. No guarantee. Figure it out.
Meanwhile, he's spent the last seven weeks recovering in a facility, on the taxpayer dime, with the exact kind of paid, job-protected leave he spent his entire career keeping out of reach for everyone else.
This isn't really about McConnell's health. People get sick, people fall, people deserve to heal. The problem is that he only believes that's true for himself.
If paid leave is good enough for a senator recovering from a fall, it's good enough for the mother recovering from childbirth, the warehouse worker with the flu, and the nurse who just got diagnosed with something serious.
Guaranteed paid leave shouldn't be a privilege of power. It should be a floor everyone stands on.
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