When it comes to retirement in America, we’re sailing directly into a perfect storm. Never before in human history have more people been looking ahead to more years of retirement. At just the moment that our largest generation, the baby boomers, is entering its golden years, it is becoming harder for Americans to save for retirement. Right...

Imagine you’re a veteran who was critically wounded while serving your country. You’ve returned home, struggled through rehab, and now, finally, you’re ready to get on with your life and start a family. Your injury has made it difficult to conceive the old-fashioned way, so you turn to in vitro fertilization—only to discover...

With only 8 percent of salaried workers currently covered by overtime rules, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., says it’s time for the federal government to intervene. After becoming the top Democrat on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in January, Murray is among the leading backers of a White House plan to expand overtime...

Bipartisan bill to fix K-12 education law that expired seven years ago passes Senate by a vote of  81 to 17   WASHINGTON, D.C., July 16 – The Senate today passed by a vote of 81 to 17 the Every Child Achieves Act, the bipartisan agreement by Senate education committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Ranking Member Patty...

In 1935, in the midst of the Great Depression and at a time of instability and uncertainty for families across the country, our nation recognized the need to protect the rights of workers to improve their pay and working conditions through collective bargaining. That’s why Congress passed a law called the National Labor Relations Act. Under...

The senators’ Every Child Achieves Act passed the education committee 22-0   WASHINGTON, D.C., June 24 – Senate education committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-Wash.), following Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s announcement that the Senate would take up their bipartisan...

When Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) left his leadership post in 2012, because he wanted to “do more to make the Senate a more effective institution,” any attempts to reauthorize No Child Left Behind (NCLB) remained tightly lodged “in a ditch.” But within the coming days or weeks, Alexander will shepherd a big, controversial...

Over the last 50 years, our country has come a long way toward ensuring women can make their own choices about their own bodies. Today, nearly every woman will use birth control at some point in her life. And now that birth control is counted as a critical health benefit that insurance companies have to cover with no out of pocket costs, more than...

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray is demanding records from three medical-device makers tied to reports of “superbug” infections in the nation’s hospitals, including the manufacturer of scopes blamed for an outbreak at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle. Murray sent letters Tuesday to Olympus Corporation of the Americas, Pentax Medical...

On Tuesday afternoon, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), announced the introduction of the Affordability IS Access Act, a bill that would build on the contraception coverage required in the Affordable Care Act by allowing FDA-approved birth control pills to be made available over the counter. “Anyone will tell you that when something is too...

Congress is working on rewriting the rules that determine how federal financial aid for college is distributed, and U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, is playing a key role. On Tuesday, Murray spent an hour talking to three Washington college students about how financial aid has worked for them — and how it hasn’t. Murray is now the...

Lawmakers in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate introduced legislation on Wednesday that would have the effect of barring discrimination against LGBT people in credit if signed into law. The bill, known as the Freedom from Discrimination in Credit Act, was re-introduced in the U.S. House by Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) and in the U.S. Senate by Sen....

Amid reports that insurers aren’t providing women accurate information about birth- control coverage under the Affordable Care Act, U.S. Sen. Patty Murray on Tuesday urged federal officials to take a stronger stance to ensure compliance with the law. In a letter sent to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell, Murray called for the...

If we have learned anything about the economy over the past few years, it is this: Real, sustainable and fair economic growth comes from the middle out, not the top down. If the middle class isn’t feeling secure, and if workers can’t climb their way up the ladder, it doesn’t matter how many millionaires are getting bonuses or how...

IF we have learned anything about the economy over the past few years, it is this: Real, sustainable and fair economic growth comes from the middle out, not the top down. If the middle class isn’t feeling secure, and if workers can’t climb their way up the ladder, it doesn’t matter how many millionaires are getting bonuses or how...

Top Democrats laid down their minimum-wage marker on Capitol Hill on Thursday, setting up their party's middle-class-focused economic message heading into the 2016 elections campaigns. Their pitch: "$12 by '20" — a $12 per hour federal minimum wage by 2020, which they say will give a pay raise to nearly 38 million Americans. "This is a...

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) is calling on health insurance companies to follow the requirements for contraceptive coverage under ObamaCare.  Murray wrote to eight insurance companies offering coverage on the ObamaCare marketplace in her home state of Washington on Tuesday raising concerns about the results of a report from Northwest Health Law...

Last month the Senate passed a measure during the midnight hours that has one lawmaker pretty pumped up. The issue: paid sick days for all Americans. It’s something Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) feels "really strongly about.” And after 15 Republican senators voted in favor of her amendment during a budget vote-a-rama, she sees an...

While most of the Senate spent the week wrestling with a human trafficking bill and arguing over the confirmation of a new attorney general, the Senate education committee was collegially zipping through its rewrite of No Child Left Behind. The bill includes toxic education topics like testing and school performance ratings. It’s been...