New parents face “the social insecurity of our time,” wrote Marco Rubio this morning in USA Today, with Missouri representative Anna Wagner. The pair were presenting a new parental leave bill, with a unusual “conservative” financing solution behind it.
“It is estimated that just over one in 10 workers receives paid family leave from their employers,” wrote the politicians, “and those who do tend to be in highly paid and educated professions.”
The US is one of only two countries worldwide (Lesotho is the other) that don’t force employers to offer parental leave. As Rubio correctly assesses, this causes “increased debt, welfare receipt, reduced birth weight and negative cognitive outcomes for children and increased family instability.” It also poses significant health risks for mothers and newborns.
The bill, which will be introduced in Congress this week, proposes a solution unlike those that already exist in the rest of the world: Instead of mandating that employers cover family leave, or using taxes to pay for it, the new bill would ”give parents the option to pull a portion of their future Social Security benefits to finance paid parental leave.”
In other words, parents would finance their time spent caring for infants with money borrowed from their future selves, according to the new bill. But that means choosing between their kids and their retirement.
“Senator Rubio’s bill presents a cruel choice to American employees,” wrote in a statement Christine Blackburn, Policy Director of the American Sustainable Business Council (ASBC). “They should not be forced to choose between taking leave they need now or full retirement benefits.”
Another solution to America’s absence of paid family leave was proposed in the Family and Medical Insurance Leave (FAMILY) Act in early 2017. Championed by Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, it would guarantee both family and paid medical leave to workers through a social insurance program modeled after a California policy which provides 12 weeks of paid leave.