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U.S. Labor Secretary Martin Walsh and Rep. Colin Allred met with business leaders and community organizers in Dallas on Thursday to tout the Biden administration’s plans to shore up the nation’s infrastructure and expand family leave benefits.
Walsh and Allred made stops at the Dallas Regional Chamber, the Garland Veterans Affairs Medical Center, the Semones Family YMCA and the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library. They were joined by Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson at two of the stops.
“We have an opportunity right now in this country to make an investment, a long-term investment, in people,” Walsh said. “Not the Democratic Party, not the Republican Party, not the conservatives, not with the progressives, but the American people.”
The plans, called the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan, propose massive investments in infrastructure, workforce training and child care.
Biden’s American Jobs Plan would modernize 20,000 miles of highways, invest in research and development and expand broadband access to rural areas. The plan would invest about $2 trillion over the next 10 years.
The American Families Plan promises $1.8 trillion in investments and tax cuts for families and workers. It includes two years of free preschool and two years of free community college for all Americans, a national paid family leave program and an increase in tax credits for families with child care needs.
Both plans have met with resistance from Republican congressional leaders who consider the price tags to be excessive. On Thursday, a bipartisan group of 10 senators said it’s working on an infrastructure deal with $579 billion in new spending. President Joe Biden walked away from a Republican-only proposal earlier this week.
Dallas business leaders from companies like Bank of America, Fidelity Investments and Accenture engaged in a roundtable discussion with the secretary at the DRC, discussing the need for better child care and family leave options for Dallas workers.
Family leave policies were especially important to Johnson and Allred, both of whom welcomed children in the last few months.
“I was fortunate enough to take a short paternity leave last month when my family welcomed our newest addition, Cameron, and I know that that’s not the reality for far too many of our working parents,” Allred said.
Texas companies with more than 50 employees are required to offer 12 weeks of parental leave for employees under the Family and Medical Leave Act, though the leave does not have to be paid. The United States is the only industrialized nation without a national family leave program.
Walsh discussed the need for infrastructure investment, including repairing roads, modernizing public transportation and expanding broadband access.
One in seven Texas households lack access to broadband, Allred said, a problem that was exacerbated by the pandemic.
In addition to speaking with business leaders, Walsh and Allred stopped to visit with community members.
“I wanted to show the secretary the business community that we have here and also the community of people who make this area run and how investments in the American Jobs Plan will make all of these things run better,” Allred said.
Their second to last stop was at the Semones Family YMCA, which Allred said he grew up attending. It was also where he worked his first job.
“To bring the labor secretary here to talk about entry-level jobs, literally, and how important they are, the child care that goes on here and how important that is, all of that is part of the American Jobs Plan,” Allred said.
Walsh’s trip to Dallas is part of a nationwide tour to promote the plans.
“I’m realizing the Jobs Plan is needed as much in Dallas as it was in Madison, Wisconsin, as much as it was in Memphis, Tennessee, as much as in Boston, Massachusetts [and] Broughton, Connecticut,” Walsh said. “All those different cities that I’ve been to are very different in some ways but are all similar.”