Meghan Markle‘s attempts to influence Biden’s $1.75 trillion infrastructure plan have fallen short, it was revealed on Thursday, as the President announced he has dropped paid leave for new parents from his bill, just days after the Duchess penned a lobbyist letter pleading for it to be made a ‘national right’.
The 40-year-old mother-of-two sparked furious controversy earlier this month when she turned lobbyist by writing an open letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer advocating for paid family leave.
Meghan’s extraordinary 1,030-word letter, which was written on the Sussexes’ new post-Megxit letterhead, sparked furious controversy – and saw the Duchess accused of using her British royal title to try and meddle in US politics.
Some also suggested that she was using ‘tactics of an aspiring politician’ and adopting a ‘ruthless streak’ to try and influence Biden’s Build Back Better bill.
However her efforts have now been proven in vain after the President announced on Thursday that he has cut his proposals for paid national leave for all new parents from his infrastructure bill, which has been tangled up in Congress for months, in a bid to push it forward.
Meghan Markle’s attempt to make paid leave for new parents a ‘national right’ have failed after it was revealed President Joe Biden has dropped the plan from his $1.75T infrastructure bill
President Biden detailed a compromised version of his proposal on Thursday – eight days after Meghan, 40, turned lobbyist by writing to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer about paid leave
In the letter, which was handed out to several of the Sussexes’ preferred media outlets, Meghan, who grew up in a middle class family in Los Angeles, said that she was writing to Pelosi and Schumer not as an ‘elected official’ nor a ‘politician’ but as an ‘engaged citizen and parent… and as a mom’.
In one of the most astonishing parts of her letter, she suggested that her own family was impoverished, even though her father was an Emmy award-winning lighting director and she was educated at private primary and secondary schools.
She painted a picture of humble beginnings and saying that her family struggled when she was young – despite her well-documenting middle class upbringing on Thomas Markle’s $200,000-a-year salary.
‘I grew up on the $4.99 salad bar at Sizzler,’ the Duchess of Sussex wrote. ‘I knew how hard my parents worked to afford this because even at five bucks, eating out was something special, and I felt lucky. I started working (at the local frozen yogurt shop) at the age of 13.’
She continued: ‘I waited tables, babysat, and piecemealed jobs together to cover odds and ends.’
However, Meghan failed to mention the $750,000 California state lottery win her father scooped in 1990, which funded her secondary education at $9,412-a-semester Immaculate Heart High School in LA.
Meghan also attended a private primary school – Hollywood’s Little Red Schoolhouse nursery, which now costs between $20,000 and $28,300-a-year – from age two on her father Thomas’ and her airline steward mother Doria’s salaries.
She went on to study at Northwestern, in Illinois, which would have cost between $24,000- and $28,000-a-year for tuition when Meghan studied there from 1999 to 2003.
