McConnell, out sick for two months, voted against medical leave 23 times since 1985

Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in July 2026. (Office of Senator Mitch McConnell)

Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was hospitalized on June 14 after suffering a fall that left him unconscious. He remained hospitalized until mid-July, when he was transferred to a rehabilitation center. On August 6, McConnell announced that he was discharged and was continuing his recovery at home.

But, two months later, McConnell has not returned to work in the Senate. Over that period of time, he has missed 59 floor votes. Nevertheless, McConnell has continued to receive his Senate salary of $174,000 per year.

McConnell is fortunate to be employed in a job with excellent benefits. There is no federal law, however, that provides guaranteed paid sick leave. In 2025, about 27 million private sector workers had no paid sick leave.

One reason: Mitch McConnell.

Since he entered the Senate in 1985, McConnell has voted against creating or expanding medical leave — paid and unpaid — at least 23 times.

Notably, near the beginning of his tenure, McConnell supported the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which provided up to 12 weeks of unpaid medical leave to care for yourself, a child, a spouse, or a parent. On June 14, 1990, McConnell delivered a floor speech declaring that the law was necessary “to promote the well-being of American families.”

The Senate approved the FMLA by voice vote the same day. But it was vetoed by President George H. W. Bush.

A year later, however, the Senate took up the FMLA again and McConnell reversed his decision. “I understand the reason for the Family and Medical Leave Act. We need to protect employees, and strike a balance between the needs of the marketplace and the needs of individuals who work in that marketplace. That was my reason for supporting similar legislation last year, although no recorded vote ever was taken on the issue,” McConnell said in 1991. “Today, however, we are mired in a continuing recession. Our Nation’s economy is in feeble health, its fiscal arteries clogged by tax increases and massive regulatory burdens.”

McConnell declared that he “cannot support any massive work force mandates like the measure before us today” and urged his colleagues to “revisit this issue when the economy is on a sounder footing.”

In the 35 years since, McConnell has never again voiced public support for medical leave and consistently opposed efforts to expand paid and unpaid medical leave.

McConnell’s long record of opposing medical leave

In October 1988, McConnell opposed a cloture vote on the Parental and Medical Leave Act, the precursor to the FMLA, which would have provided eligible employees with unpaid leave for a new child, a child with a serious illness, or for a serious health condition. In September 1988, McConnell also supported an effort to delay the legislation.

After his initial support in 1990, McConnell spent years opposing efforts to pass the FMLA and supporting amendments to weaken the bill. In 1991, McConnell opposed an amendment to create the FMLA of 1991. The same year, McConnell supported an amendment that would have required employees to enter arbitration procedures if their employer violated the law. McConnell also supported the Republican alternative to the bill, the American Family Protection Act, which did not guarantee medical leave. In 1992, McConnell voted against overriding Bush’s veto of the FMLA.

In February 1993, McConnell voted against the FMLA again, which was ultimately signed into law by President Bill Clinton. During consideration of the legislation, McConnell supported at least six efforts to weaken the bill. For example, McConnell supported an amendment that would have instead provided tax incentives for employers that adopted “flexible family leave policies.” McConnell additionally supported an amendment that would have allowed employers to satisfy the FMLA requirements “by offering such leave as a benefit in a cafeteria plan,” which could have required employees to give up other benefits to qualify for medical leave. In July 1993, McConnell also supported efforts to “eliminate a family and medical leave requirement” from the National Service Trust Act of 1993.

In 2015, McConnell also voted against adding an amendment to the congressional budget to establish “a deficit-neutral reserve fund for legislation to allow Americans to earn paid sick time.”

In 2019, senators debated whether to accept a provision in the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act to expand paid medical leave for federal employees. McConnell voted against a resolution to accept the House version, which would have granted federal personnel paid leave to take care of sick family members, as well as new children. Instead, McConnell voted for a provision that favored “voluntary compensatory time programs” and tax incentives over family and medical leave.

At the start of the Covid pandemic, the House passed a bill with bipartisan support to temporarily mandate paid leave, although many of its provisions were watered down due to pressure from the Trump administration and business groups. The House bill mandated 14 days of emergency sick leave for the next year, with the government reimbursing businesses for the cost.

McConnell voted against a proposal in the Senate to make the paid sick and family leave mandate permanent. He then voted in favor of another proposal to cut the paid leave from the bill, instead routing funding to state unemployment agencies.

The final version did include paid sick leave, but it was reduced to 10 days. McConnell nevertheless derided the medical leave provisions as “a new, untested mandate on small businesses” imposed at “literally the worst time in living memory,” before voting in favor of the bill. Two days later, McConnell introduced legislation to allow the administration to issue waivers to employers.

Later in the pandemic, McConnell voted in favor of striking a provision from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 that created a fund to give federal employees up to 600 hours of paid Covid-related leave. The vote failed and the provision remained in the ARPA, which McConnell ultimately voted against.

Most recently, as rail workers threatened to strike in 2022 over work attendance policies that gave them inconsistent time off and penalized workers for taking sick time, the federal government stepped in to impose a new contract for the workers and avert a strike. McConnell voted against a proposal that would have added seven days of paid sick leave to the contract. Although it received bipartisan support, it fell short of the 60 votes needed to pass. Eventually, McConnell voted in favor of the final contract, which imposed wage increases and added one personal day, but did not add any sick time for rail workers.