Sen. Gillibrand's Family Act, with Rep. Rosa DeLauro sponsoring the House version, would create a new national program to cover up to 12 weeks of partial paid leave for a new child, or to care for a sick family member or for medical reasons; it would pay for the benefit through increases in payroll taxes.
President Trump has also called for a nationwide paid family leave program, including in his 2019 State of the Union address to Congress, and his daughter Ivanka has advocated for paid family leave.
The 2017 tax law also established tax incentives for employers offering paid family and medical leave. California, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Washington, New York, and Washington, D.C. are the only states to have passed paid family and medical leave policies.
Paid parental leave may be gaining momentum nationally, but there are significant differences between liberals and conservatives on the issue.
Conservatives tend to be skeptical of creating a new government program or raising taxes to pay for federal paid leave policies, and generally want to limit paid leave to only for the birth or adoption of a child. Liberals, meanwhile, prefer creating a new government program and expanding paid leave to include uses for family and medical care, and balk at the concept of interest-free loans from the government, Mathur explained.
One thing that Mathur noted, along with the Heritage Foundation's research fellow Rachel Greszler, is that middle-to-high income earners tend to utilize paid leave policies through their employers or state and local programs.
According to a 2017 Pew Research survey only 22 percent of workers surveyed with incomes of less than $30,000 a year reported receiving income while on leave for parental, medical, or family reasons.
Furthermore, the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) provided 12 weeks of unpaid time off for qualified employees; around 40 percent of workers, mostly low-income earners, do not qualify for this benefit of unpaid leave, Mathur said.
Thus, low-income earners tend to slip through the cracks when it comes to accessing paid and unpaid leave benefits.
"It is exactly the disadvantaged workers, the workers with low incomes, workers who have part-time work, who cannot hold down steady jobs, those are the ones who are the most affected and have the least access to either paid or unpaid leave," Mathur said. "It makes sense at least to come together to talk about something that would help the poorest workers."
A "prebate paid family leave program" could only end up being a "subsidized loan to middle and upper-income earners who are more likely to already have access to paid family leave," Greszler said.
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She added that the Cassidy-Sinema proposal is "unique" in that it adds no new taxes or employer mandates, but sets up a policy that is essentially an "interest-free government loan"; she warned that could set up "a slippery slope" where taxpayers could do the same with other tax credits, such as buying a home or a car.
Matt Hadro was the political editor at Catholic News Agency through October 2021. He previously worked as CNA senior D.C. correspondent and as a press secretary for U.S. Congressman Chris Smith.