Press Releases

LOWELL, MA – Today, Congresswoman Lori Trahan (MA-03) joined Alisyn Camerota on CNN Newsroom to discuss the latest on Congress’s efforts to pass President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Act. During the interview, Trahan detailed how her young daughter’s COVID-19 exposure demonstrates the need to pass the bill’s once-in-a-generation investments in working families, particularly working moms.

“Alisyn, I’m home right now proxy voting because I got that phone call from the school nurse that my seven-year-old, my second grader, was exposed and she couldn’t go to school,” Congresswoman Trahan said. “Do you know how many women get that phone call and because we don’t have a paid family and medical leave policy in our country, they sink under the logistics or the pressure and anxiety of getting that phone call? That’s what’s the problem right now. That’s what we’re trying to fix. We want women to go back into the workforce. We need to have paid family and medical leave. We need child care to be there for our working families.”

The Build Back Better Act will be key in achieving a better future for workers and their children through investments that will lower the costs of health care, make family and child care affordable and accessible, and address the climate crisis. During the interview, Trahan cited a provision to create a national paid family and medical leave program, which would ensure that the United States is no longer listed as one of six nations in the world without such program.

In addition to the long overdue creation of a national paid family and medical leave program, the Build Back Better Act would prove transformative for working families through an extension of the tremendously successful strengthened Child Tax Credit, increased access to quality, affordable child care, home health care for those in need, and much more.

“We’re going to have an opportunity to create an economy that’s fair for everybody, that people can participate, that women can participate,” Congresswoman Trahan said.

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