Senators are coming together to examine ideas on paid family leave Wednesday, encouraged along by the support of first daughter and senior White House adviser Ivanka Trump.
A key Senate panel is holding a hearing to weigh some of the ideas currently on the table following 17 months of talks between Trump and lawmakers. While Democrats have long supported paid family leave, Republicans in recent months have shown growing interest, even though the parties still disagree on policy details.
The hearing, according to Trump, “represents an incredibly important opportunity for Congress to work across the aisle and advance a national paid family leave plan that supports American families and the American workforce.”
The U.S. stands in contrast to other industrialized nations that have set a mandatory or subsidized leave policy. The first daughter has not endorsed a specific idea, but her staff stressed in an interview that the main aim is to allow members to bring their ideas forward and arrive at a plan that gains support and can pass.
“We are in a unique place right now in that Republicans are at the table and embracing this idea,” a senior White House official said, adding later, “For something to pass it’s going to have to be bipartisan legislation, so let’s look at the various innovative approaches.”
The hearing, held by the Subcommittee on Social Security, Pensions, and Family Policy, part of the Senate Finance Committee, is the first time in almost four years that a Senate panel has raised the issue.
[Also read: Adviser to Ivanka Trump on paid family leave initiative exits White House]
“I look forward continuing to work with lawmakers as we take next steps in this important bipartisan effort to deliver on one of the president’s campaign promises and executive priorities, and sign a paid family leave policy into law,” Trump said in a statement provided to the Washington Examiner. “This legislation is long overdue.”
One of the soon-to-be-unveiled ideas comes from Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and would allow parents to draw from their Social Security benefits early and then defer their retirement benefits. Thirty-two Senate Democrats support a different proposal offering paid family leave through payroll taxes paid for by employees, similar to laws on the books in California, New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who is chairman of the subcommittee, said that he had an “open mind” about the proposal Rubio has been discussing.
“My goal is to learn about the issue, to see if it’s feasible, and to see how much it will help working families and their children,” he said of the hearing ahead.
Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, also had shown interest in the idea and is set to testify Wednesday, but her press office did not respond to requests about what her formal position would be. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, is supportive of the idea of paid family leave but hasn’t taken a position on the Rubio plan yet, according to his spokesman, Conn Carroll.
Democrats remain skeptical about the approach. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, the top Democrat on the subcommittee who supports the payroll tax bill, said he had been disappointed in the past by Republicans opposing Democratic ideas, but said he’d “keep trying.” He also has concerns about the conservative approach on paid family leave, he said.
“When Republicans talk about Social Security it’s always in the end an attempt to undermine it and privatize it, and I assume that’s probably what they’re trying to do here,” he said.
The Democratic proposal has been put forward for several years. The most recent version was introduced by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and is called the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act. Gillibrand will be speaking about the bill during the hearing.
The proposal, unlike the Republican idea, allows leave for circumstances other than a new child, including if a family member gets sick or if someone needs to take time off to undergo treatment for an illness. During that time, people would be guaranteed 66 percent of their regular earnings or up to $4,000 a month. The plan is similar to short-term disability coverage some employers offer.
Rubio’s plan hasn’t been shared, but an aide confirmed it would be similar to one that was proposed several months ago by the conservative Independent Women’s Forum. Under the plan, the provision to draw from Social Security would be available to each spouse for up to 12 weeks, for a total of 24 weeks, for each child who has been born or adopted. In return, parents would defer their retirement benefits for the amount of time necessary to offset the cost of their parental benefits.
The proposal shifts the use of Social Security to a time in people’s life when they have a smaller income, as parents, from a time in their lives where they are likely to have more, said Andrew Biggs, a resident scholar on Social Security reform at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who will be testifying at the subcommittee hearing Wednesday.
“The policy is not perfect but strikes me as a reasonable set of trade-offs,” Biggs said. Anticipating criticisms on cost, he added that, “getting bipartisan support on anything is hard.”
“Social Security is underfunded, I understand that, but this proposal is designed to be cost-neutral. Congress has been sitting on the Social Security problem for 30 years and has basically done zero,” he explained.
Democratic critics of the idea say that people already do not receive enough in Social Security benefits and that the policy would disadvantage low-income workers and larger families.
Vicki Shabo, vice president for workplace policies and strategies at the National Partnership for Women and Families will testify in opposition to the idea on Wednesday. She plans to address the need for medical family leave to be included in legislation, and her organization is pushing for the passage of Gillibrand’s bill.
The Social Security idea also has conservative critics. The American Action Forum estimates the program would cost $10.5 billion in 2019 and $227.6 billion from 2019 to 2034, when Social Security is currently projected to reach depletion.
“The research concludes that, although the proposal is intended to be self-financing, in practice, it would worsen Social Security’s already troubled outlook,” the organization concluded.
Roughly 15 percent of U.S. workers have access to paid family leave through their employers. Under the 1993 Family Medical Leave Act, employers with 50 workers or more must allow 12 weeks of leave every year so can they care for a new child or an ill parent, but in most cases, the leave isn’t paid.
Supporters of passing a national paid family leave policy say that it would help women stay in the workforce and allow for men and women’s wages to be more similar to each other. Despite the factions, policy experts say that there has been a visible shift in Congress to consider such proposals.
Adrienne Schweer, director of the Task Force on Paid Family Leave at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said passing a bill in this will likely take time.
“Nationally, support of paid family leave is really high,” she said, pointing to statistics from the Pew Research Center showing that 82 percent of the public believes mothers should receive paid family leave after a birth.
“Questions for how it gets paid for and who administers it make it really complicated to determine what the right policy path forward is,” she said. “But there is increasing interest on government being a player at the table and helping to solve some of these challenges.”
