What Biden’s COVID-19 relief proposal means for paid leave
Yahoo Finance’s Alexis Christoforous and Akiko Fujita along with Kathleen Romig, Senior Policy Analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, discuss Biden’s push for the expansion of paid leave.
Video Transcript
ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Also on Biden's early to do list is passing an emergency COVID leave law and a permanent paid leave program. Joining us now to talk about that is Kathleen Romig. She is senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Kathleen, good to see you. Break this down for us. How would this plan differ from the emergency COVID leave plan we saw enacted early in the pandemic last March?
KATHLEEN ROMIG: That's a great question. So that program expired, for the most part, at the end of December. And so one thing this would do is extend that to give workers additional weeks of leave so that they can continue to take the leave that they need in 2021. But importantly, it would also significantly expand the reach of that leave. The March 2020 legislation called Families First left out over 100 million workers from the paid leave. That paid leave included paid sick days for people who need to take time off because they're showing symptoms of COVID, for people who need to get a COVID test, of course, for people who are suffering from COVID.
So two weeks of paid sick days. It included 12 weeks of paid family leave for parents whose children schools or child carers have shut down and that they are unable to go to work or to perform as many hours of work as they were able to before. So this Biden plan would take that Families First leave and expand it substantially to 100 million more workers than before and would also renew the amount of that leave so that workers get an additional 14 weeks this year in 2021.
ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Kathleen, when you look at the scope of this $1.9 trillion plan that President Biden now has proposed, it certainly points to just how difficult the path forward is on the virus as well as the economy. We're talking about unity today. But as you know, when you get down to work, the divisions could likely form. What do you think are the chances at this point of getting this passed in its current form pretty quickly?
KATHLEEN ROMIG: Yeah. I mean, it's an interesting question because I think paid leave is one of those things that really does unify the parties. It unifies workers and employers as well because think about what would happen in the absence of a law like this. What employer is able to float the salaries of employees whose children have been out of school for 10 months now and counting? What about all of these tens of millions of workers who didn't have a single sick day? Just as this crisis hits, their employers are taking a big hit financially. And so it's difficult to be able to finance a big undertaking like a paid leave program in a private sector.
So I think this is something that actually has unified, and we've seen bipartisan calls for a permanent paid leave program as well. So I think that's very helpful that we have employer support for having emergency paid leave, certainly, and we have bipartisan support on Capitol Hill for looking at new ways to provide paid leave to workers. So I think that's very helpful. Certainly, Families First passed with overwhelming bipartisan support back in March of 2020. So I think this is something that is on the list of both Republicans and Democrats.
ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Now, another thing he is trying to get passed would be comprehensive caregiving policies. And I know that President Biden speaks of this personally. I mean, he had to care for his two sons when he was widowed early on in his marriage. He lost his wife and his daughter when he was working as a young Senator. So tell us a bit about what that caregiving policy might look like.
KATHLEEN ROMIG: Yes. The caregiving policy that now President Biden unveiled on the campaign trail was very comprehensive. It included a permanent paid leave program. It also included money for child care. It also improves the wages and treatment of the workers who provide that kind of care, you know, direct care in homes. It also had provisions for Family Caregivers who provide much of the care for older Americans, and of course, for children as well. So there were all kinds of different provisions in that plan that he laid out, and the paid leave policy was a big part of that.
And as you said, it's something that's very personal for him. Having been a primary caregiver of his children and when his family suffered that tragic accident, and so he spoke very movingly about that. And I think the paid leave part of it is something that's been percolating for decades now. You know, California has had a paid leave program now for over 10 years, and other programs have been springing up in other states, and there is just an increasing conviction that we need to have a permanent paid leave program in this country for people when they're having a baby or adopting a child, for people when they're suffering a serious illness or injury. And of course, there are people who are caring for family members who are suffering from those same things.
ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: And Kathleen, in laying out his proposals, the president has said that, look, this is all about not just the initial rescue package, but planning to build back better. I mean, that's sort of been his theme since the election. Can you sort of connect the dots for us here? When you're talking about something like paid leave, ultimately, how does that benefits the economy as a whole? If we're looking on the other side of the pandemic, you know, what can be done as a result of these policies being passed?
KATHLEEN ROMIG: Yeah. That's a great question. So just addressing the emergency leave first, it's clear that it is a boom to the economy to have paid sick days. There's lots of research on the states that have paid sick days showing what happens during flu season. And what happens is you have less absenteeism because people are able to go and take care of themselves and not spread the flu. You have higher economic growth. You have employers that are able to count on having a healthy workforce, and this is really important. You see lower rates of transmission, and we've seen similar things with this COVID leave.
What's happened in states that didn't previously have paid sick days, you see 400 fewer infections on average a day in those states, and that' 39 states. So that adds up to 15,000 fewer infections a day in states even with this more limited leave. This leaves out so many workers. 15,000 fewer infections per day because of the sick days alone. And then you see what's happening with women in the workforce, especially working mothers as schools have been closed for nearly a year in many districts and in remote or hybrid in many others, that we've seen hundreds of thousands of women leave the workforce altogether, many women cutting down on hours.
When we're able to supplement those wages, then those women can hold on to their jobs, and they can continue to help, you know, build their companies and build the economy. But when they're abandoned and when they just have to try to eke it out somehow with children at home for nearly a year now, then we lose that powerful engine of economic growth, the working mothers of America.
ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: All right. We're going to leave it there. Kathleen Romig, senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Thanks for your time today.
