Senator Kirsten Gillibrand's office issued the following earlier today:
December 12, 2019
Washington, DC – U.S.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, the foremost champion of paid family leave
in the U.S. Senate, today wrote an op-ed for CNN on her landmark
legislation, the FAMILY Act. Gillibrand contrasted her policy
with the proposals being considered at the White House summit today,
noting those policies fall far short of true paid family and medical
leave.
The full text of Gillibrand’s op-ed may be found here and below.
On Thursday, the President's daughter and
senior advisor, Ivanka Trump, will host a summit at the White House to
push for what is being billed as "paid parental leave." I've met with
Ms. Trump, and while I believe she is earnest about this issue, this
administration has done nothing more than pay lip-service to paid family
leave. Thursday's photo op is designed to push plans that don't even
come close to being adequate.
The United States needs paid family and
medical leave. Badly. We are the only industrialized country in the
world that doesn't guarantee its workers some form of paid leave.
Not only is this morally wrong, but it
hurts our economy. Many of the wealthiest companies offer paid leave
because it creates a more competitive and productive workplace and helps
them attract top talent. Employees perform better when they don't have
to worry about choosing between earning a living or caring for a loved
one or themselves. In fact, small businesses are at a competitive
disadvantage because they cannot afford to provide the same benefits as
bigger competitors.
Unfortunately, the White House-backed
proposals fall short of true paid family and medical leave and would do
little to meet the real needs of American families.
The nonpartisan Center on Budget and
Policy Priorities analyzed one of the proposals, the "Advancing Support
for Working Families Act," and found "it provides no net new financial
help for families." It is essentially a payday loan, which must be paid
back over a decade by forfeiting benefits from the Child Tax Credit.
Worse yet, other administration-backed
proposals, like last year's Economic Security Act for New Parents
(reintroduced this year as the New Parents Act), would ask workers to
cut into their future Social Security benefits in order to receive paid
family leave in the present.
At a time when we need to be strengthening
Social Security, this perverse trade off does the opposite. Finally,
these ideas only cover new parents, excluding individuals with their own
serious health concerns or those caring for a sick parent, spouse or
child.
I take this issue personally. When I got
pregnant with my first son, Theo, I was working as a lawyer. I needed
time to recover and care for my baby, but I was shocked to learn that my
firm had no policy for paid family and medical leave. So I changed it,
writing our firm's first-ever parental leave policy.
Now, in the Senate, I'm attempting to do the same thing for all American workers, for all family events.
In 2013, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro and I
introduced the FAMILY Act, which, unlike the White House proposals,
doesn't require people to borrow against their future earnings to cover
today's health emergencies. The FAMILY Act would ensure that every
worker can take up to 12 weeks of paid leave for a personal or family
medical emergency or the addition of a child to the family. It creates a
fully separate earned benefit, a self-sustaining family insurance
program funded through small contributions by employers and employees,
for $2 a week each — about the cost of a cup of coffee. I often ask
employers, "wouldn't you buy your employees one cup of coffee a week to
ensure this benefit is there when they need it?" The answer was always a
resounding yes.
This proposal has momentum. According to
Data for Progress, "two-thirds of US voters (66 percent) support a
program providing up to twelve weeks of paid leave for serious personal
or family health issues or to care for a new child, which would be paid
for through a payroll tax increase." Data for Progress found that not
only do these numbers include significant majorities of Democrats and
independents, but even a near majority of Republicans supported such a
program.
Last week, House Democrats were able to
put parental leave for all federal workers into the National Defense
Authorization Act, an annual defense spending bill. The bill was passed
on Wednesday. Once enacted, this means the nation's largest employer
will now provide parental leave to more than 2 million American workers.
It is a huge first step, but it is my hope that paid leave for other
family emergencies will be added in the future, to cover all of life's
unexpected medical events.
The proposals being highlighted at today's
summit would support a far less generous benefit for American workers.
We do a great disservice to them if we settle for half measures when the
true goal is in sight. Full paid family and medical leave is an idea
whose time has come, and we owe it to the American people to get it
done.
