WASHINGTON, D.C. – Representative Lynn Woolsey (D-Petaluma) today introduced legislation to help American working families by expanding child care, helping employers provide benefits for all their employees, improving the Family Medical Leave Act and expanding assistance for school children to ensure that they are ready and prepared to learn.

“If we can cut taxes for the richest Americans; if we can preemptively go to war; and, if we can even think about sending a man to Mars, we can give families the tools they need to be both responsible parents and responsible employees.”

The following are Rep. Woolsey’s words as written:

“Good morning. I’m here today to unveil a new legislative package that responds to one of the most urgent challenges facing American families today. I call this the Balancing Act, because it is designed to help strike the delicate balance between work and family…to help parents handle their two full-time jobs…to give them the tools to be both a reliable employee and a responsible parent.

“It’s been more than a generation since the fundamental character of the American family began to change. We used to be a nation of predominately nuclear families with one breadwinner who went to work each day and a full-time parent who minded the domestic front. Today, for complex economic and cultural reasons, more than two-thirds of families have two parents – or one unmarried parent -- working outside the home.

“But our government hasn’t been responsive enough to these changes in the American family. Amid this socioeconomic revolution, public policy remains largely stuck in an “Ozzie and Harriet” world. Under President Clinton, we got the Family and Medical Leave Act and some other family-friendly initiatives. But it’s time we had a comprehensive, holistic approach to family policies.

“As someone who was a single mother before there were TV shows about single mothers – at a time when it was a social stigma and an even bigger economic burden – I do feel uniquely qualified to address these issues.

Specifically, the Balancing Act will:

* Help us move toward paid family leave.

* Invest in child care, so that more centers will accept younger children and disabled children; so that the providers are well-trained and adequately paid; and so that child care facilities can be built and renovated.

* The Balancing Act would establish voluntary, universal pre-school. It would make breakfast at school free to all children who want it, and provide dinner for children in afterschool programs whose parents are working late.

* In addition to investing directly in children, the Balancing Act helps lighten the load on parents. It would make part-time employees eligible for job benefits. And it would encourage businesses to let more employees telecommute.

“I want to thank my colleagues who have joined me in this effort, as original co-sponsors of the Balancing Act – Representatives George Miller, John Conyers, Barney Frank, Rosa DeLauro, Dennis Kucinich, Tom Lantos, Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, Juanita Millender-McDonald, Carolyn Kilpatrick, Jose Serrano, Barbara Lee, Corrine Brown, Grace Napolitano, Frank Ballance, Edolphus Towns, Nick Lampson, Donald Payne, Julia Carson, Major Owens, and Linda Sanchez.

“The Bush domestic policy agenda couldn’t make life more difficult to families trying to perform the balancing act. Their tax cuts benefit the wealthiest Americans, the people whose lives are already in balance because they can afford a private nanny or expensive nursery school. On top of that, the Administration's policies are undermining overtime pay, excluding low-income Americans from the child care tax credit and starting to privatize portions of both Medicare and Social Security.

“As for their budget priorities, apparently we can afford to rebuild an entire society halfway around the world – one that we unnecessarily destroyed in the first place – but we have to make cuts in vocational education and family literacy. We can afford to send a manned mission to Mars, but for life back here on earth, we have to lop off $408 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The irony, of course, is that the Majority's policies have gotten a lot of mileage out of supposedly being on the side of family values. They offer programs like their new marriage initiative -- $1.5 billion to help the poor acquire the interpersonal and conflict management skills to promote and strengthen marriage.

“But the people I talk to don’t want the government to be their family therapist. They want a government that helps create good jobs with good benefits…flexible workplaces, universal health insurance…affordable child care…safe afterschool programs and much more.

“No amount of mentoring or counseling would have saved my marriage to man who left me alone and destitute, with three young children to raise when I was 29 years old. What I needed at that desperate moment in my life was not right-wing moralizing, but the social safety net – the very social safety net conservatives seem determined to tear down. Although I had a job, I needed public assistance to provide my family with life’s basics – food, health insurance and child care. Only truly compassionate government policies helped me turn my life around.

“To conservatives, being “pro-family” usually means some kind of lifestyle judgment about what is a legitimate family and what isn’t. Look at it this way: for heterosexuals, they believe marriage is so indispensable that we must spend $1.5 billion to promote it. But for gays and lesbians, they find marriage so depraved that we ought to consider writing discrimination into our Constitution to prevent it.

“We’re interested in a real pro-family agenda. The Balancing Act addresses the issues families struggle with at the kitchen table, not the things they do in their bedrooms. Thank you very much. I’d be happy to take some questions.”