Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), a senior member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, and Chairman of its Subcommittee on Children and Families, today issued the following statement on President-Elect Obama’s announcement of the nomination of former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to be Secretary of Health and Human Services.  Daschle will also serve as Director of a new White House Office on Health Care Reform and Jeanne Lambrew will serve as its Deputy Director:

Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) today responded to the Department of Labor’s (DOL) announcement of new Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) regulations.  Dodd and Clinton are the authors of a provision signed into law last year that allows the family of wounded military personnel to take up to 6 months of unpaid leave, expanding on the 12 weeks of unpaid leave provided by the FMLA. 

Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), a senior Democrat on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), Chairman of its Subcommittee on Children and Families, and author of the Family Leave Insurance Act, legislation that would provide paid leave for employees, today praised the State of New Jersey for becoming the third state to adopt paid family leave after the State Senate approved a paid family leave bill that  New Jersey Governor John Corzine has committed to sign.

“I congratulate the State of New Jersey on becoming only the third state to adopt paid family leave, and sincerely hope that their work will spur more support for my efforts to make paid family leave a national policy,” said Dodd.  “Last year, I introduced the Family Leave Insurance Act, legislation that would allow American workers to take up to eight weeks of paid leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act, helping to make sure that no one is forced in a time of crisis to make the impossible choice between work and family.”

To the Editor:

Re “Catching Up on Family Values” (editorial, Feb. 26):

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After marking the 15^th anniversary of the enactment of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) on February 5^th, Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Subcommittee on Children and Families, discussed how to build upon the success of FMLA in the coming years at a press conference today.  Senator Dodd is the author of FMLA, which has allowed more than 60 million workers to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave if they are ill or if they need to care for a sick family member or new child.  Among the topics to be discussed at the event will be “The Family Leave Insurance Act,” a bill to provide up to 8 weeks of paid leave under FMLA that was introduced by Senator Dodd and Senator Stevens (R-AK) last year, and the new FMLA regulations recently proposed by the Department of Labor. 

After marking the 15^th anniversary of the enactment of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) on February 5^th, Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Subcommittee on Children and Families, today convened a subcommittee hearing to examine how to build upon the success of the FMLA in the coming years.  Senator Dodd is the author of the FMLA, which has allowed more than 60 million workers to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave if they are ill or if they need to care for a sick family member or new child.  Among the topics discussed at the hearing were “The Family Leave Insurance Act,” a bill to provide up to 8 weeks of paid leave under the FMLA that was introduced by Senator Dodd and Senator Stevens (R-AK) last year, and the FMLA regulations recently proposed by the Department of Labor.        

Senator Dodd, author of the landmark Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and Chairman of the Subcommittee on Children and Families, today raised concerns about new regulations to the FMLA proposed by the Department of Labor:

"Fifteen years ago today, on February 5, 1993, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) was signed into law. It was the first bill President Clinton signed—but by the time it reached his desk, it had endured eight years of obstruction and two presidential vetoes. Over those eight years, I was driven by stories of Americans forced to make the excruciating choice between the job they need and the family they love: new mothers returning to work after the birth of their child to find that they had been replaced; husbands facing demotion if they stayed home to care for an ailing wife.

It wasn’t so long ago that trying to get time off could get you fired.

That’s what I learned from Eva Bunnell when I met her at church in East Haddam, Conn., in 1989. Eva’s daughter Jacinta had been born with a rare brain disease and was fighting for her life in the ICU. Her husband asked his employer for time off to be at the side of his wife and baby. And he was told to never come back — leaving the family without an income, without health insurance, and almost without hope.

Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) today applauded the enactment of their legislation, the Support for Injured Servicemembers Act, which was signed into law by President Bush late yesterday.   The Dodd-Clinton legislation extends the benefits provided under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) by allowing the families of wounded military personnel to take up to six months of unpaid leave to care for their loved ones during the often lengthy rehabilitation process.  The legislation immediately implements a key recommendation of the Commission on the Care for Wounded Warriors, led by former Senator Bob Dole and former Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala.