Texas Republicans Are About To Kill A Paid Parental Leave Bill
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Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan (R) vowed to provide more resources for mothers following the U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down a federal right to abortion.
When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal right to abortion last June, triggering a Texas law that makes the procedure a felony, Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan (R) tweeted that his legislative chamber would “double down on maternal health care and resources for women, children, and families.”
Those resources apparently do not include paid parental leave for the nearly three-quarters of Texas workers who currently lack paid family leave of any kind.
Last Thursday, Texas Rep. Angie Chen Button (R), chair of the state House International Relations and Economic Development Committee, informed Texas Rep. Penny Morales Shaw (D), the chief sponsor of a bipartisan paid parental leave bill, that the bill will not get a hearing and is thus effectively dead, according to a Democratic Texas House staffer involved in advancing the legislation.
Chen Button decided against holding a committee hearing, a prerequisite for a committee vote and a potential vote on the House floor, after two business groups — the Texas Association for Business and the National Federation of Independent Business — objected to the idea of the hearing, according to the Democratic staffer, who had knowledge of the conversation and requested anonymity to speak freely.
The development was especially disappointing to Democrats because Chen Button had, just days earlier, assured Morales Shaw that the bill would at least get a hearing, the Democratic staffer added. And Morales Shaw had signaled her willingness to water the bill down by making the program optional for small businesses with fewer than 50 employees.
“It feels like a gut punch,” the Democratic staffer said. “At the end of the day, the business lobby has veto power over the extent of their commitment to families.”
If we’re really pro-family, we wouldn’t have any inhibitions or concerns about offering paid leave for families with newborn children and recently adopted children.Amanda Posson, senior policy analyst at Every Texan
Chen Button could still change her mind. She has until next week to put the bill on the committee hearing calendar through the normal channels. After that, it would require extraordinary, exceedingly unlikely measures to grant the bill a hearing or a vote on the House floor.
Spokespeople for Chen Button, the Texas Association for Business and the NFIB, respectively, did not respond to HuffPost’s requests for comment on the Democratic staffer’s version of the conversation between Chen Button and Morales Shaw.
Morales Shaw’s Texas Family Act would guarantee Texas’ full-time workers 12 weeks of paid leave, up to $1,000 a week, upon the birth or adoption of a new child.
The bill’s financing mechanism is what drew the ire of the Lone Star State’s powerful business lobby. To fund the program, Morales Shaw and her nine co-sponsors would levy a tax equivalent to 0.15% of the total wages that a business pays out. For example, on a payroll of $500,000, a company would contribute $750 to a new state entity called the Texas Family Fund, which would pay out benefits to workers with a new child.
Proponents of the bill note that the new program would help women, in particular, stay in the workforce, potentially unlocking $19 billion in lost wages.
Texas Rep. Penny Morales Shaw (D) introduced the Texas Family Act that would guarantee full-time workers with a new baby 12 weeks of paid time off up to $1,000 a week.
“The free market hasn’t solved a very public, widespread issue and gap in our system,” said Amanda Posson, a senior policy analyst at Every Texan, a liberal think tank that collaborated closely with Morales Shaw on the bill. “It’s time for a people-centered public solution that can fill in this tremendous gap that erodes our workforce retention, and that we clearly saw in the pandemic leads women and mothers out of the workforce, and costs all of us, ultimately.”
There is no exact data available on the number of Texas workers who currently do not receive paid parental leave from their jobs. But 74% of Texas workers — 10.8 million people — lack either paid parental leave or paid leave to care for a family member, according to an analysis of official data conducted by the National Partnership for Women and Families, a pro-paid-leave group in Washington, D.C.
Every Texan estimates that about 144,000 full-time Texas workers would receive benefits from the Texas Family Fund in its first year of operation.
“If we’re really pro-family, we wouldn’t have any inhibitions or concerns about offering paid leave for families with newborn children and recently adopted children to provide this really valuable and important care,” Posson said. “There shouldn’t be a conflict here.”
Texas Republicans are known for their opposition to higher taxes on business and employer mandates of any kind.
There was some optimism, however, that even the Lone Star State GOP would warm to modest benefits for new parents in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision overturning a federal right to abortion. The high court judgment enabled a 2021 Texas law to take effect that prohibits abortions in all cases but those where the pregnancy endangers the mother’s life.
The law, which threatens doctors who perform abortions with life imprisonment, also put a spotlight on Republicans like Speaker Phelan who promised that the self-described “pro-life” party would help families care for children after they are born.
Texas state Rep. Angie Chen Button (R) may be protecting Republicans from having to either take an unpopular vote against the parental leave bill or cross the party’s big-business backers.
Sure enough, Texas Republicans are on track to pass legislation providing state employees with paid parental leave benefits.
Morales Shaw and her allies hoped that ensuring private-sector workers the same benefits might be next. She succeeded in recruiting a Republican co-author for her bill, state Rep. Ben Bumgarner, whose vote would have ensured the bill’s passage out of the state House International Relations and Economic Development Committee. And representatives of the labor, medical and faith communities were prepared to testify at a hearing about the bill.
What’s more, Chen Button, a business-friendly Republican from the Dallas suburbs and a vice chair of the Texas House’s Early Childhood Caucus, seemed like the right person to confirm that the bill got fair consideration.
Chen Button might benefit politically from forging a bipartisan compromise with Democrats. With suburban voters drifting toward Democrats in response to Donald Trump’s presidency, she nearly lost her bid for reelection in 2020. Texas Republicans drew her a much more conservative district in 2022, enabling her to win reelection handily this past November.
When Chen Button expressed reservations about the bill’s impact on Texas’ small businesses, Morales Shaw was willing to play ball by exempting the smallest businesses from the program, thus sparing them from the new 0.15% payroll tax.
But now the Democratic Texas House staffer fears that quashing a hearing on the bill and deferring blame to two business groups is Chen Button’s way of protecting Republicans from having to either take an unpopular vote against the bill or cross the party’s big-business backers.
“One thing we had anticipated from the beginning, since most Republicans support paid parental leave ‘in theory,’ is that this is the kind of bill that no one wants to kill in broad daylight,” the aide said. “So it’s being killed in the shadows by not getting a hearing.”
