Daily Kos87%
Republicans love paid sick leave—for themselves 59%
By Emily Singer87%
7/13/2026, 6:00:00 PM
Keywords: Congress, Healthcare, Mitch Mcconnell, Paid Sick Leave, Thomas Kean Jr, Workers, Workers Rights
BS Summary: This article contains 26 faulty reasoning types, including Biased Writer Voice, Negativity Bias, and Confirmation Bias, with Politically Left Leaning Bias as the most egregious example at 37.3% saturation with 233 hits. Analysis detected 1,797 faulty-reasoning hits from 625 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 56.3% and a BS Rank of 59% (6,474 of 15,794 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 59.00% of the article peer group.
The Republican Party is firmly against paid sick leave for workers, making the United States the only advanced economy that does not require it.
But two Republicans—Sen.
Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Rep.
Thomas Kean Jr. of New Jersey—have recently received months of paid sick leave, even though they have a track record of voting against it for U.S. workers.
GOP Sen.
Mitch McConnell of Kentucky conducts a news conference on July 28, 2020.
McConnell has been absent from work since June 14, which means that, as of Tuesday, he’ll have been gone for an entire month.
He has already pocketed $14,500 of his $174,000 annual congressional salary—which will continue to grow as his return date remains unclear—all while not showing up to vote.
Meanwhile, Kean was gone for much longer, missing every House vote from March 5 through June 30.
That’s a 117-day absence, which would amount to roughly $43,500 of paid leave.
And while they pocketed that taxpayer-funded paid leave, both McConnell and Kean have voted to screw average workers out of the same benefit.
McConnell has not only voted against paid sick leave but sick leave altogether.
He was one of 27 senators who voted against the landmark Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, which requires companies to give workers 12 weeks of unpaid leave after the birth or adoption of a child, to recover from an illness, or to care for an immediate family member with a serious health condition.
Meanwhile, when Kean served in New Jersey's state Senate, he voted against landmark legislation that requires businesses to give workers paid sick leave.
Even more galling is that both McConnell and Kean refused to explain why they weren’t on the job until they were publicly called out for their lengthy absences.
GOP Rep.
Thomas Kean Jr. of New Jersey
Kean returned from his nearly four-month absence in June to say that he had been receiving inpatient mental health treatment.
And McConnell finally shared proof of life on July 12 with a photo of himself recovering in the hospital, saying that he suffered yet another fall and contracted pneumonia.
McConnell's condition was unknown since he was taken to the hospital by ambulance on June 14.
And his staff's refusal to provide any updates led to rampant conspiracy theories that McConnell was incapacitated and unlikely to return to Congress.
In a lengthy statement on Sunday, McConnell said that he had avoided sharing an update because “folks of my generation often hesitate to share the vulnerability that comes with growing older,” but he conceded that the public had a right to know.
But he said that he still doesn’t know when he’ll return to Congress—meaning that Kentuckians will go even longer without a voting senator.
“As much as it frustrates me, this process takes time.
And on the advice of my doctors, I won’t be able to return to the Senate floor to vote quite yet,” McConnell wrote.
It’s interesting that he thinks that he deserves to take sick leave but everyone else does not.
Probably sensing the shameless hypocrisy, McConnell insisted that he’s still working.
“Rest assured that, in the meantime, I’m not taking a break from the Senate business that matters to you,” he wrote.
“I’ve been working closely with my legislative staff on current issues, and with my Kentucky team who help me provide timely constituent services across our Commonwealth.
I’ve also been keeping in touch with my Senate colleagues on the appropriations process, midterm politics, and everything in between.”
But there’s one important thing that he still can’t do: cast votes.
As a Democrat, I'm fine with that.
But his absence is already proving to be a headache for the GOP.
Oh, well.
Analysis
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