Free Republic

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is frog-marching her vulnerable members to a political suicide vote on a bill that’s likely dead on arrival in the Senate.On November 2, five House Democrats—enough to block the passage of the spending spree that the party hopes to enact via the budget reconciliation process—wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, urging her “to only bring a bill to the floor for which we have a strong level of confidence…will be ruled in order by the Senate parliamentarian and earn passage in the U.S. Senate.”The lawmakers have justifiable reason for concern. Major pieces of the 2,135-page...

Senate Bill 1383 by state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) would provide millions of employees who work for smaller businesses with the same 12 weeks of job protections while taking family leave as those who work for larger companies. The bill now heads to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has said he will sign it. California’s paid family leave program allows workers to take time off to bond with a new child or care for a sick family member while receiving 60% to 70% of their weekly salary for eight weeks.

As Congress mulls a fourth phase of coronavirus stimulus, it is time for them to include relief aimed at safeguarding the family — both through the duration of this crisis and into the future. Specifically, Congress should pass the bipartisan paid family leave bill introduced late last year by Senator Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) that would allow every family the ability to receive a $5,000 “baby bonus” advance on their Child Tax Credit upon the birth or adoption of a child. This pandemic has imposed serious financial obstacles on millions of families across the country. Many...

Following increased interest in expanding access to paid family and medical leave, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D–Conn.) joined forces with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D­–N.Y.) to promote the Family and Medical Insurance Leave, or FAMILY, Act. If we believe the act's supporters, it would cost close to nothing and provide essential benefits to employees who don't currently receive them. Unfortunately, these claims are bogus. Under the FAMILY Act, the federal government would offer 12 weeks of paid time off to enable workers to care for infants, recover from major illnesses, and care for severely ill relatives. During that time, employees would receive...

One of the biggest arguments for paid leave for new parents has been an economic one: Research has repeatedly shown that women with paid time off after childbirth are more likely to keep working. But a new study, the largest to be done in the United States, found the opposite. In California, which in 2004 became the first state to offer paid family leave, new mothers who took it that year ended up working less and earning less a decade later. They averaged $24,000 in cumulative lost wages, it found. “I could feel the air going out of the room...

House and Senate negotiators on Monday released an agreement for the massive annual defense policy bill that would give federal workers 12 weeks of paid parental leave in exchange for creating President Trump’s long-sought Space Force. The $738 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) covers everything from how many planes and ships the military can buy to reforming privatized military housing. News broke Friday night that this year’s bill – the result of months of negotiation between the Democratic-led House, Republican-led Senate and the White House – also includes a historic deal to provide paid parental leave to all federal...

Republican Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Mitt Romney of Utah, with House co-sponsor Ann Wagner of Missouri, unveiled a paid family leave bill on Wednesday, which would require interested new parents to make changes to their Social Security strategy. Under the legislation, parents can pull forward up to three months of those retirement benefits to use for leave following the birth, or adoption, of a child.

Sen. Marco Rubio has introduced legislation to establish a modest federally funded family-leave program. Mr. Rubio proposes to finance the benefit by requiring recipients to forgo their first three to six months’ Social Security checks. Mr. Rubio’s well-intentioned plan begins by promising a small, carefully targeted benefit and assuring us that it won’t add to the long-run public debt. But history demonstrates that is how costly entitlement programs begin. The pattern of expansion is remarkably common. New programs initially target benefits to a group of individuals deemed particularly worthy at the time. Eventually the excluded come forth to assert that...

When it comes to supporting families, paid parental leave is a solution to a number of problems. Studies show that paid leave can reduce infant mortality, increase breastfeeding rates, can improve maternal mental health and strengthen the connection between fathers and babies. There are a ton of benefits to parental leave, ones that American families should be seeing, but aren't. While some employers have been modernizing parental leave policies, federal policy lags behind. The last major policy change came in 1993, when the Family and Medical Leave Act passed with bipartisan support, guarantees more than half of American workers 12...

Many new moms this Mother’s Day won’t get what they most want: time to recover from childbirth and care for their newborns without great financial sacrifice. The United States is essentially the only developed country in the world that does not guarantee mothers paid leave. Most conservatives already support the principle of paid leave. According to the Pew Research Center, 75 percent of Republicans think mothers should receive some paid time off. It is time for conservatives to back a sensible policy for America’s mothers. The principles behind paid family leave are deeply consistent with conservatism, and our movement is...

Leftists have been pushing the idea of paid family leave for a long time. It was one of the big early crusades of Bill Clinton’s presidency. The notion that the government should help cover the costs of having a child springs naturally from the “progressive” mindset that government should be there to provide in case anyone needs (or merely prefers) assistance. It also dovetails with the liberal political mentality that many votes are to be won by giving people stuff. And now, we find that people who are not on the left are nevertheless backing a paid family leave plan,...

First daughter Ivanka Trump penned an op-ed Tuesday, making her case why paid family leave is an important policy that benefits American women as well as the economy. "Providing a national guaranteed paid-leave program — with a reasonable time limit and benefit cap — isn’t an entitlement, it’s an investment in America’s working families,” Trump wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. ADVERTISEMENT She laid out the benefits from such a program, saying it will lead to "Healthier children and parents in more tightly bonded families, greater financial stability and stronger attachment to the labor force are among the most...

President Donald Trump is looking to make good on his campaign promise to ease the financial burden on new parents, by including paid family leave in his budget request to Congress next week. Trump's first budget proposal as president will include the creation and funding of a program to provide all mother and fathers with six weeks paid time off after the birth or adoption of a child, two White House officials told The Washington Post. This outline makes the plan far more inclusive than the original family leave idea Trump touted during his election campaign, which excluded fathers. First...

State workers who are denied unpaid sick leave required by federal law cannot sue the states, the Supreme Court said in a victory for states' rights that some liberal advocates saw as a bad omen for President Obama's healthcare law. The 5-4 decision is a setback for millions of employees of state agencies and state colleges, and it voided in part a provision in the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993. Among other things the act said that employees had a right to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to recover from an illness or childbirth. The...

In what the employment bar is calling a “bombshell decision,” the MCAD has quietly announced it will apply the Massachusetts Maternity Leave Act to both women and men. The revelation came at a recent Foley Hoag client event at which the guest speaker, MCAD Commissioner Martin B. Ebel, told the crowd of about 200 surprised lawyers and corporate officials that, effective immediately, his office plans to prosecute MMLA cases in a gender-neutral fashion. In a follow-up interview with Lawyers Weekly, Ebel confirmed that he made the statements and that, for the first time in the history of the statute, the...

The Democratic Congress, which has accomplished basically none of its stated agenda, has decided to try running American businesses instead. After all, they couldn’t do any worse. Don’t overestimate them. Last week the honorables gathered – only after giving Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama extra time to get there from the campaign trail – to vote on a measure that would have made it easier for women to sue for employment discrimination. The issues largely concern the notion of “equal pay for equal work,” and the bill would extend and redefine the statute of limitations so women could wait until...

If you read my October 15, 2007 column, you can simply replace “America’s Retirement Accounts” with “Paid Family Leave” to describe Hillary’s next step in her march toward socialism. Rather than repeat how this idea is also counter to the founding principles of our country, and how she ignores other serious problems, let’s examine the consistency of her political pandering strategy. Each installment of Hillaryism targets a different group that feels victimized by a lack of success or some sort of worrisome stress. Not making enough money to support their family, insufficient health care or health insurance, not enough money...

Saying that California's family leave laws are already too confusing, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has vetoed two bills that would have expanded family leave to include care for ill siblings, in-laws and grandparents. "While some expansion of existing law may have merit, these laws in combination are too expansive and also fail to recognize the need for reforms to current law," Schwarzenegger wrote in a veto message shortly before his Oct. 14 deadline to act on bills from the 2007 legislative session. California now requires firms with 50 or more workers to provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for...

WASHINGTON - Patti Phillips didn't have to choose between work and family when her 12-year-old daughter was diagnosed with bone cancer. Her employer gave her time off as needed under the Family and Medical Leave Act to care for Stephanie while Phillips brought home a paycheck and the health insurance that came with her inventory-control job with a Georgia soft-drink company. Off and on until Stephanie's death earlier this year at age 18, family leave proved to be "a godsend right to the end," Phillips said. She also praises her bosses for understanding how important it is for workers "to...

Democrats press for 5 weeks of family leave with pay By Ralph Thomas Seattle Times Olympia bureau OLYMPIA — Democrats in the state Legislature say they have their best chance in years to give Washington employees up to five weeks of paid family medical leave — and a guarantee that they would still have a job when they return. The proposed benefit, which would be one of the most generous in the country, has roiled the state's business groups, who say it would drive up costs and weaken Washington's recovering economy. Under existing federal law, employees in larger companies are...