WASHINGTON — Faced with the possibility that a paid family and medical leave proposal could be cut from spending legislation, allies of the White House are trying to salvage it by offering a compromise that would initially give workers four or six weeks off.
The plan that is under discussion would scale up over 10 years to the 12 weeks that President Joe Biden originally proposed and advocates of the policy continue to support.
Workers would have as much as 85 percent of their wages replaced — just as they do in Biden’s proposal — if they take time off to care for a newborn, ailing family member, sick child or their own severe or long-term illnesses.
“We understand we’re in difficult negotiations right now. But what gets decided has to be substantial enough to make sure that low income workers will use it. That parents who are struggling to make ends meet can use it,” Carol Joyner, the labor project director for Family Values @ Work, said.
The proposal was gaining traction with liberal groups as Democratic lawmakers returned to Washington this week to continue negotiations on the $3.5 trillion package that was intended to fund much of Biden’s agenda. That price point is expected to come down significantly in a final bill, and progressive advocacy groups have been scrambling to make sure their priorities are included.
White House officials have assured paid leave advocates that their program is not on the chopping block. Advocates said the administration asked for ideas as it searches for ways to reduce the bill’s overall price tag.
Advocates acknowledged providing White House and Democratic leaders in Congress with options to bring the cost of the paid family leave proposal down to an estimated $300 billion. That amount is more than Biden’s proposal of $225 billion, but less than the nearly $550 billion that House lawmakers have proposed.
The White House said Monday that negotiations on the spending bill are ongoing and declined to comment on the discussions around paid leave. A senior official previously told McClatchy that the White House was not backing away from paid leave and other care initiatives that are in the legislation.
Vice President Kamala Harris last week at a virtual town hall said the Biden administration’s agenda would “expand paid leave.”
“We are not taking care of workers who need time off to care for themselves or people in their families. And it’s just not right,” she said.
Paid leave supporters took Harris’ remarks to mean that the initiative is still in the legislation after becoming concerned earlier last week that it could be removed from the bill.
They said that Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s past support for bipartisan paid leave legislation is also an encouraging sign. The Democratic senator will be a key decider on what provisions are left out of the legislation.
West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, another Democrat who could derail the bill, has said he would like to see significant cuts in the overall spending package but has not signaled his views on the paid leave program.
Biden, during a speech on child care last week, acknowledged the overall package was likely to be smaller than the $3.5 trillion he wanted and said he would seek additional money for his agenda down the line.
“We’ll get less than that, but we’re going to get it. And we’re going to come back and get the rest,” he told reporters.
He met Monday with Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and a supporter of the paid leave program that is in the spending bill.
For a federal paid family and medical leave program to have the support of liberal groups that the Biden administration is counting on to help sell its agenda, the spending package would need to have a minimum of four weeks and scale up, advocates involved in the conversations told McClatchy.
“The paid leave community is very clear that a meaningful program can be done at different toplines and there are ways to scale it and still have it be a meaningful program,” said Dawn Huckelbridge, director of Paid Leave for All. “It is non-negotiable that a meaningful paid leave program be in this package.”
Limiting the program to paid parental leave would also be problematic, advocates said, because only a quarter of the people who take extended leave do so to care for newborns. The rest of the workforce uses long-term leave to care for elderly parents and sick children, to address chronic health issues or deal with other medical and family emergencies.
“It’s incredibly important that we focus on parental, personal and caregiving under the banner and then also upgrade. We need to have progressive wage replacement, so that working people who are least likely to access paid leave, or access and use it, actually can,” said Molly Day, executive director of PL+US (Paid Leave for the United States).
One idea that lawmakers have discussed to fit as many programs as possible into less costly spending legislation is to reduce the number of years funded for each program. But advocates said it would be a challenge to enact an effective paid leave program that low-income workers are able to take advantage of in fewer than 10 years.
Joyner said it would take two to three years to set up a national program, and implement and promote it.
“The question for the federal government is why would we want to spend that kind of money and stand up a program that is not permanent, that only lasts a couple of years, before we have to start again?” she said. “It just doesn’t make sense.”
Rachel Greszler, a research fellow in economics, budget and entitlements at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said that more businesses have initiated paid leave during the pandemic and offered scheduling flexibility as they compete for workers.
Greszler said she expects that trajectory to continue and worries that a federal program with rigid rules on how paid leave can be used would be burdensome and complicated for both employers and employees.
“It’s a very different picture, what paid family leave looks like, if you’re going through a bureaucratic government program versus a more flexible and accommodating one from your employer,” she said. “I just worry that it’s actually going to be to the detriment of anybody who either already has a program now or who would be getting one soon.”
Advocates say that they are committed to fighting for 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, but they understand that they could wind up with nothing if they did not accept a compromise.
Joyner recalled the legislative fight over the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, which she said was whittled down to 12 weeks of unpaid leave that does not adequately support low-wage workers.
“We don’t want to wait another 28 years. We think this is a once in a generation opportunity,” she said.
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