New Republican push for paid family leave in coronavirus stimulus package

Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy said he will repackage his paid family leave proposal as a five-year pilot program in the hopes that it will pass Congress this month as part of the coronavirus stimulus legislation.

Cassidy said parents have been strained during the pandemic and that the paid family leave proposal could help ease some of their burdens. The five-year pilot program is intended to help with the cost of daycare and other expenses and replace wages for new parents who take a leave of absence from their jobs.

The proposal would provide $5,000 in advance on new parents’ child tax credits and reduce families’ tax credits by $500 a year for 10 years, if they choose to participate in the voluntary federal program. Families are normally eligible for up to $2,000 annually in tax credits for each child, that would change to a maximum of $1,500 a child if they participated in Cassidy’s pilot program.

“One thing that I’ve been hearing from moms is that they’re having to stay at home, and some of them have had a problem with employment, and so I actually think this would be an appropriate part of a COVID [bill], just recognizing that young families in particular can be particularly stressed right now,” Cassidy said.

The Republican senator and the measure’s original Democratic cosponsor, Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, introduced the paid leave bill in 2019. They hoped to bring the legislation to the Senate floor earlier this year, but the coronavirus pandemic abruptly shifted priorities on Capitol Hill. Cassidy and Sinema’s bill has lingered in limbo ever since.

It is a proposal that the White House supports, but Democrats say would not do enough to help families.

Democrats are trying to expand an emergency coronavirus measure that gave workers up to 80 hours of paid time off if they are experiencing COVID-like symptoms; need to quarantine or take care of someone who is in quarantine; or have a child whose school or daycare is closed because of coronavirus. That measure is scheduled to expire at the end of this year.

Ivanka Trump, a senior adviser to the president who has led on the issue of paid leave in her father’s administration, said the White House continues to support passage of Cassidy and Sinema’s legislation.

“We continue to work closely with bipartisan Members of Congress to provide all working Americans with paid leave,” she said in a statement. “As Senators Cassidy and Sinema continue to build coalitions of support and advance bipartisan solutions, we will continue to support such efforts so that no American family has to make a choice between work and caring for one another.”

Sinema’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Cassidy told McClatchy in an interview that he could put his new plan forward as an amendment on COVID-19 relief legislation, depending on how the package is structured when it gets to the Senate floor. If that approach is unsuccessful, he said he would seek to have the provision attached to another must-pass bill between now and the end of the year.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has not weighed in on the push and his office declined to say whether he supports the inclusion of the paid leave proposal in the stimulus bill. A spokesperson for Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer did not respond to a request for comment.

PAID LEAVE AND THE PANDEMIC

House Democrats passed a paid leave proposal in a relief package that McConnell has said the Republican-controlled Senate will not take up. The House proposal seeks to extend and expand a taxpayer-funded credit for some businesses that was provided by Congress as an emergency benefit to workers in a previous coronavirus relief package.

The paid time off for employees that the temporary program provided is a cost that is fronted by employers and reimbursed by the government through tax credits. Emergency paid leave can be used for COVID-related problems, including taking care of a child of any age whose school or daycare has closed because of the coronavirus.

But companies with more than 500 employees or fewer than 50 employees are exempt from the requirement, which Democrats say has allowed businesses with multiple locations such as restaurants and grocery stores, which mainly employ part-time and hourly workers, to skirt the rules.

Democrats want to remove the restrictions on company size and give workers another year to take advantage of the temporary tax break that lawmakers approved for companies in a previous recovery bill. The benefit will expire on Dec. 31 unless lawmakers decide to renew it.

Vicki Shabo, a senior fellow at New America, is among those who believe that the emergency benefit program should be reformed and extended before it expires to create certainty for both businesses and workers that the paid leave program will be operational until a coronavirus vaccine is widely available.

She said that Cassidy’s proposal to provide paid leave to new parents does not go far enough, especially during a widespread health crisis.

“It is completely failing to address the serious and growing health and care needs that don’t relate to people with newborn children,” Shabo said. “If there’s anything that this pandemic has shown us, it’s that the most vulnerable workers don’t have access to sick leave or family leave, and as a consequence during this pandemic, are creating risks not only to themselves but are being forced to create risks to the communities they live in and serve, as well.”

Kathleen Romig, senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, similarly finds Cassidy’s approach problematic. She said that the government should be focused on solving issues like child care closures that will be key to reopening the economy.

Romig said that Cassidy’s bill is a “very limited and very temporary solution” that she said will not provide coverage to enough people in a post-pandemic world.

“We have a permanent need for paid leave in this country, and a comprehensive need for paid leave in this country and just addressing it for parents, and only new parents, and only over the very short term, just doesn’t seem to address that need. And certainly doesn’t address the emergency needs that we have now,” she said.

Business groups say it is too soon to determine whether the temporary tax credit that Democrats want to extend would help keep workers on payrolls through the pandemic.

Conservatives like Carrie Lukas, president of the Independent Women’s Forum, argue that the bill created a new mandate on employers to provide paid leave that is “incredibly disruptive” to some businesses, because they are expected to pay absent workers for up to 10 weeks total. The government reimbursement does not come until later.

Lukas supports Cassidy’s proposal to let families borrow from future tax credits, because it is voluntary and limited to parents who need additional support the year that they give birth to or adopt a baby.

“This is obviously not meant to solve all problems,” she said of the bipartisan bill. “There are some people who are never going to be satisfied.”

By turning the proposal into a five-year pilot program, Cassidy told McClatchy he hopes to demonstrate “proof of concept.”

Cassidy said he believes the program will help to elevate families out of poverty and assist women to grow their income. He said the bill is intended to give new families a running start, especially those who have birthed or adopted children during the health crisis and are currently facing job loss and financial uncertainty.

The Republican senator said the reason for focusing on a paid leave program that only applies to new parents is that they are most likely to need to stay home with their children. “So we’re not thinking of expanding it to older children, because our whole strategy, our whole rationale, is that first year is the most expensive year,” he said.

Cassidy argued that reopening schools will relieve stress on parents with older children. He said that a COVID-19 testing strategy for children should be part of school reopenings.

As for the extension that Democrats are advocating to stretch the emergency program, he said it is difficult to predict what will happen later this year with COVID-19 and whether the emergency tax credit will be needed through the end of 2021.

“A little bit of what we’re trying to anticipate is circumstance, right? And I think it’s best to see how that circumstance plays out,” Cassidy said.