Rep. Murphy must consider ‘care infrastructure’ in twin House votes
On Tuesday, my representative, Stephanie Murphy, and her colleagues in the House finally took the next, though far from only, step towards passing historic investments in infrastructure and economic growth.
While her vote to approve the reconciliation framework is encouraging, the congresswoman continues to make troublingly clear that, in spite of her constituents’ bipartisan support, her final vote to pass the landmark agenda is far from secure.
The night before Tuesday’s crucial vote, Rep. Murphy published an op-ed for the Sentinel detailing her opposition to the Democratic caucus’ careful legislative strategy to approve the historic packages in the coming weeks (“Rep. Stephanie Murphy: We need infrastructure funding now,” Aug. 24).
Far from looking to bolster the bills’ chances of becoming law, Rep. Murphy called for the separation of the two packages and signaled that in the coming weeks she will use her considerable leverage to attempt to drastically scale back the long-overdue investments contained in the reconciliation framework she just helped pass.
The reality is that to pass either piece of legislation, Congress must continue to approve both in the same time frame. If Rep. Murphy is successful in securing a more “targeted” reconciliation package, neither bill will become law, and her constituents will be stuck with a status quo that maintains unaffordable rental and housing prices, inaccessible child care, and a climate crisis that threatens our state’s way of life.
Not only am I one of Rep. Murphy’s constituents, but in 2016, I was a Democratic Party field organizer in Florida’s 7th District, working on the campaign that first put her in office. In the three terms since then, she has been admirably determined to pursue bipartisan policies, such as these infrastructure investments, that benefit working-class people.
But she continues to operate under an outdated and inequitable idea of what “infrastructure” actually is. Infrastructure is simply the systems we as a society create to ensure each of us is able to fully participate in the economy. Like she correctly says in her op-ed, addressing frustrating I-4 traffic is absolutely an infrastructure issue.
But just as important as roads and bridges is “care infrastructure”: long-overdue support for child care, home-care, and paid family and medical leave that people need in order to provide for their families and participate in the economy. My sister, also a born-andraised Central Floridian, struggles every month to secure reliable child care for her son, Reese, who has a disability and needs specialized care. Far too often, she has to give up shifts at her hospitality job because there aren’t enough affordable, qualified child care providers.
So many people in Central Florida and across the country know exactly how my sister feels because we have built an economy that both excludes them from fully participating and has been holding back economic growth for decades. So where are the infrastructure investments she, and countless others like her, need in order to change that?
They’re in the reconciliation bill Rep. Murphy wants to cut.
Unlike Rep. Murphy’s preferred bill of the two packages up for debate, only this reconciliation bill contains the historic investments in care infrastructure necessary for the (mostly female) workers like my sister to fully participate in our economy. Combined with other groundbreaking supports such as a permanently-expanded Child Tax Credit, universal pre-K, and many more, this package helps everyone, but especially women, avoid having to choose between their job and their family.
Far from being “distinct” as Rep. Murphy claims, the bills are two sides of the same infrastructure coin — one cannot fulfill its potential without the other.
Both are also extraordinarily popular. The key investments across both bills are broadly supported by 73% of voters.
Additionally, 81% of voters, including 75% of Republicans, want to see investments in physical and care infrastructure passed at the same time.
That some Republican members of Congress are not willing to listen to their constituents, rise above petty partisan politics, and pass these bills does not change the fact that the bipartisan majority of us, the congresswoman’s constituents, wholeheartedly want her to join that consensus. The alternative is to align with Beltway Republicans as they sell out their working-class constituents to buy a little political leverage.
We want Rep. Murphy to use her — and by extension our — voice in the House. But speaking up at the 11th hour in order to gut an agenda that helps people like my sister, here at home and across the country, is not why I worked to get Rep. Murphy elected in 2016 nor why our district gave her a third term last November.
If that is what she wants to speak up for, then she won’t be speaking for us and we will find a different voice.