We need some kind of "compassionate leave" program so that we can be at the bedsides of our dying loved ones. My father passed away in 1979 and the only reason I could be with him that day was because a snowstorm had blanketed the area and the factory where I worked was closed.
It was the first time I had seen him since the previous weekend. My mother, a Registered Nurse, was caring for him at home. He had inoperable lung cancer and did not want to die in the hospital. She told me she was sure he would pass that day.
Doctors kept him alive and in terrible pain for too long. He was reduced to lying in bed, suffering. There was and still is not a "Right to Die" law in PA and the oath my mom took when she became an R.N. forbade her from helping him to die peacefully, without pain.
Daddy's illness and death wiped out all of their savings and my mom had the choice between tending to her beloved husband at home or racking up millions of dollars in medical expenses. Daddy was self-employed and they had minimal health insurance. What a dreadful choice!
She was lucky enough to find an employer whose insurance plan covered pre-existing conditions and helped her a great deal. My husband and I both have Living Wills and specific instructions as to how to deal with medical treatments if we are unable to communicate.
I personally would like to end my life on my own terms without leaving my family in debt. The "Opioid Express" will be ready for me when I am ready for it.
2
Raise a tax - put it towards healthcare and childcare.
Most* modern civilized societies do this already. It's borderline inhumane we don't do it here.
Going back to work 8 days after my son was born felt like a betrayal to him, my wife and my own sense of personal responsibility.
6
Eight days? That's not long enough for him to get to know you or for you to bond with him. This is supposed to be a civilized country, but government policies re: pregnancy, childbirth and parenthood make this seem like a third world nation.
The infant mortality rate is dismal. So is the rate of death for pregnant and postnatal women. Clear symptoms of deadly conditions are ignored by doctors
or blamed on anxiety. The Times recently did an excellent series of articles about these women, including addressing miscarriages. Please read them; they are enlightening.
No wonder the birthrate in the USA has dramatically dropped. It's just too expensive and difficult, even dangerous, to have children. And what kind of world are we giving our children if we do choose to have them? A polluted planet run by greedy old white men isn't an ideal place to raise a child.
I was a too young to be part of the revolution in the 1960s and '70s, having been born in 1956. Now that I have the time, I think I'm physically able to participate in the 2020-2021 revolution.
If someone is willing to drive me and my electric wheelchair to events and marches, I CAN be there. In addition, I can write to my representatives and sign petitions.
If Trump is re-elected, there is bound to be a revolution. I will do my best to be a part of it. We have technologies now that we didn't have back then! I'd like to see a coalition of people who have been hurt by his actions join forces.
1
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Paid leave will be paid for somehow, be it from future benefits or from lower wages or higher prices.
Those who look admiringly to Europe might want to check how many people in European countries are govt. bureaucrats, how high taxes are, how much staples cost in those countries. They might also think about living there and seeing how much they like all that bureaucracy and interference in their lives.
1
@Daedalus As an American mother in Europe, I'm guessing that they might tolerate all that bureaucracy and interference better than you'd expect, considering it's offset by the supportive structures that make their lives less precarious.
8
Pass the Credit for Caring Act! Family caregivers are providing the equivalent of the nation's Medicaid budget in free care to loved ones. The least we can to is support them with a tax credit that will reduce their financial burden.
2
Repubs love to embrace a potential vote getting policy and promote it at campaign time and then not fund it.Announcing that you are for a popular idea and knowing it will never happen.
13
Republicans say a lot of things. They do nothing. They always do nothing except tax cuts for the rich. The Dems lose because they never mention this. They are too busy making their boring list of stuff they want to do.
6
Paid family and medical leave is absolutely needed. Funding it by making workers dig into public benefits early, however, is a nonstarter. Those who need paid leave most are usually lower and mid-earning Americans who are least able to set aside enough money for retirement. Already, nearly half of American families have virtually no retirement savings (other than Social Security) (https://www.epi.org/publication/retirement-in-america/#chart5). Why make those who need the benefit most put their retirement years into further jeopardy? A fractional increase in FICA would cover it. That (or something similar that spreads the risk across the population) is the solution we should use.
8
As usual, republicans say they support consumer-friendly legislation and then try to undermine its ability to get passed. Republicans are typically dishonest and disingenuous, and they have brainwashed their amen corner into thinking it is the democrats who are trying to take something away from them. The republicans are the world's great snake oil salesmen, and they are lucky to have a large number of uneducated rubes in America, who can't see through their baloney.
10
Do our overpopulated and most likely dying planet a favor. Don’t have children.
3
Whaaaa---?? Who slipped up and put Andrew Yang in the photo and caption?? Be careful, the "media mentions" for him may rise above #16.
1
Mandated vacation time should be next.
3
How generous of the GOP to support some form of paid leave . Why don’t all of you return the money you earned while President Obama was in office for not working unless you call obstinacy work . Suggesting those needing leave to take from their future retirement saving is foolish and inconsiderate. It took no time at all to give the rich a tax break that they shoved in their pocket . Being able to care for a new born baby or a dying family member would make an employee more dedicated to their job . Your greed is disgusting.
13
It's not supporting paid leave, if the workers are actually paying for it and not the Government.
11
More taxes are not needed. Let the employee fund the benefit themselves by an self deducting fund from their payroll which can be used for the family leave. Even if you have no family or kids you can opt in to allow for a small leave if you care as your own option.
2
A hybrid between the two ideas might pass the senate. Give everyone a small stipend for 12 weeks which is payed for with a small payroll tax. And let workers borrow against their 401k tax free for help (they way they can for a house, illness or school).
In addition exempt companies that match their employees 401k contributions from paying that small payroll tax. That last part would encourage more access to 401ks. So the idea is give people basic coverage but also encourage those individuals to build up upon that coverage through personal savings.
1
The financial implication of allowing a worker to draw early on Social Security benefits is ill explained. For a married couple, the lesser-earning spouse can choose to claim the benefits of the higher-earning spouse. Let's take a common situation where the wife makes less than the husband. She takes a maternity leave, drawing on her own future Social Security benefits. Decades later, when she retires, can she still decide to draw Social Security based on her husband's higher benefit? What if she never goes back to paid employment at all after her maternity leave? Does her husband's benefit get reduced? How does this work?
4
Bottom line imo what history has taught us with most of these social welfare issues it should be shared by the employee, the company and the gov't.
If it is funded out of the employees paycheck it is not paid leave.
If it is funded completely out of the gov't or company it puts an undue burden on them.
4
As someone who has no kids by choice, and who has had to "fill in" for countless weeks, months, for those who are on maternity leave, leaving at 3 pm to attend a kid's soccer game, etc. I am not interested in funding your maternity and paternity leave because I am already funding it! If parents want this they should fund it and if they can't afford to have kids then they should not have them. Life is full of trade-offs and choices. Plan before you do. The planet will thank you.
13
@Sarah99
You could use this type of selfish logic to justify an opposition to everything from well funded public schools to public playgrounds to any program that helps children. We live in a society comprised of all sorts of people and there are plenty of important programs and protections that may not personally benefit us but are still important.
I'd also argue that the benefits of creating a society that is more family and parent friendly will benefit more than just the families who are helped. Having policies that help promote stronger families will make a real difference for every member of our entire society, including those who don't have children over time.
12
@Sarah99 I disagree and am very glad someone was around to presumably care for you when you were born. If your employer mandates you "fill in" for those that aren't available for whatever reason, that's not the other employees fault. Family is much changed over even 20 years ago and the middle and lower classes are financially squeezed into being everything to everyone all the time. That's just the way the super rich and hard right like it. Keep women at home and pregnant, obeying their husband and serving up dinner. Don't be a lemming. Learn from the Europeans.
6
Absolutely shocked that the GOP wants something but are unwilling to actually pay for it. That's Trump's whole MO.
17
It's been said already, but just to make it clear what a transparent scam this Republican notion of "paid" family leave is, I'll restate that it is not a "benefit" to have to borrow from your future benefits to pay for time off in the present.
15
Because it may also benefit minorities and the people Republicans don't like.
That's why.
6
@nikia.davis5675
You are correct, but with the added nuances:
(a) Allow parental leave, but only for some selected as "good" mothers. Some members of minority groups might qualify, if they are lucky and jump through enough hoops. This satisfies religious conservatives.
(b) Finance it by subtracting from employees' future benefits, so no rich person's taxes are raised.
3
The Upshot headline reads: "Republicans Now Support a Form of Paid Leave. So What’s the Holdup?"
It's simple: Republicans don't support paid family leave. If they did, it would have passed by now.
16
Please stop referring to the Republican plan as “paid family leave”. It is “borrow from your future social security family leave.”
21
@mindy Or is it "get some of your social security contributions back before it crashes and doesn't pay off in your retirement"
Supreme Court has ruled social security is merely a tax, not a contract. There are no future government obligations based on current tax payments.
The 12.4% taken out of the compensation of current employees would go a long way to fund leave, retirement, or whatever spending the taxpayer deems appropriate.
2
@mindy
As with everything the GOP does these days, it is done in bad faith. Time for the famous "base" to wake up.
4
What a misleading headline. Cutting your future benefits to get some benefits now is not paid leave. I understand the Republicans want to disguise what they are doing but the New York Times doesn’t have to help them do it.
16
They are waiting until closer to the election and they will put the first daughter out there to preen
5
The red herring plan of collecting social security early flies in the face of every economic analysis of retirement saving. Social security is more than half of retirement income for almost two thirds of Americans and now Republicans want to make sure there are more old people in poverty? A complete non starter.
10
I don't know why we can't think of this like unemployment taxes/benefits. We all pay unemployment taxes, a tiny portion of each paycheck, although there's no way to know if we'll ever need to use unemployment benefits. It's the same thing with paid leave. Some of us may have children, some of us may need to care for aging parents, etc., and some of us may not need to take leave at all. But we all agree to pay into the system, because we agree that it benefits society and we never know when we might need it. Why do people get so angry about the idea of taxes for paid leave but have no problem with unemployment taxes?
23
The Republican plan makes sense. All of the emotional benefit, and most of the financial benefit, of having kids accrues to the parents themselves. It seems fair that they should also be the ones to bear the costs. Non-parents need more social security because they won't have kids to take care of them, so it's fairer to require parents to borrow from their own future benefits rather than require non-parents to pay for them.
5
@HO : "Non-parents need more social security because they won't have kids to take care of them . . ." Are you kidding? Among the many things wrong with your statement are (1) parents can't count on their kids to take care of them in retirement (there's certainly no legal obligation) and (2) non-parents don't bear the costs of raising kids so have a greater ability to save for retirement.
That said, I do think plans offering leave for multiple reasons (new child, personal illness, illness of a relative) are more likely to be perceived as fairer. Nothing seems to make non-parents more furious than the idea of offering leave only to new parents.
5
@Rupert Are YOU kidding?
(1) The overwhelming majority of parents will be, at least partially , cared for in their old age by their children and, haven spoken to many parents about this over the years, this is one of the many selfish reasons people seem to want kids in a planet already bursting at the seams.
(2) Parents should have to bear the cost of raising kids because they chose to do so! Except, of course, at the moment it is non-parents who in myriad ways subsidise parents for their decision to have kids.
3
@HO There is definitely some cost to non-parents but there is benefit too. New mothers need bonding time and have a myriad of work at home to raise a happy well-adjusted child. Investing in new mothers almost certainly will pay for itself in children who are not in the foster system and when the children grow up and don't rely on services later. The early months are just so important for the mother and child alike.
4
Do other countries actually do this? How does it work? Is this available to Uber drivers and fast food workers and hotel maids with hourly wages and unpredictable schedules? Or is it mainly for upper middle class office workers on salaries (ie, people like those who are pushing it)? I can't believe that in the American context it won't just mean that women will be seen as less desirable employees because what it amounts to is a higher pay rate for women for less work and a chance of having to get a replacement for them several times during a career. Or whatever that hotel maid's employment period is called. Sure, you can make it illegal to discriminate, like redlining is illegal. How's that working? All this will do, in the American context (barring other changes to make it work) is drive a wedge between the classes and the sexes. All employees need to be accorded a certain number of no consequence days off per year (unpaid and cumulable), for whatever reason the employee likes, and pay rates need to be high enough so people can afford to take time off. You can't transplant one policy out of context. And making ill thought out policies a litmus test puts reasonable people in the same category with "the market will solve everything through trickle down" theorists.
3
@Robert David South Other countries absolutely do this. As the article says, the US is the only developed nation where this isn't offered/
I was raised in the UK, have lived in Australia for many years, and am can confirm that this 'entitlement' is so well-established you would be considered weird for questioning it. Employers would no more think of this as a factor in deciding on someone's employability than their need for the occasional bathroom break.
If I may say so, a sad aspect of the rather insular character of the US is the US population's slowness to realise how hard done by they are by international standards. The rest of the developed world has been not only enjoying, but assuming their right to, this basic benefit for decades.
11
We need 12 weeks at minimum. When you have a serious illness, that time goes quickly! And we need to provide 80% of the person's salary. No less. I am opposed to touching Social Security. I'm in favor of a new tax that both employee and employer pays. I've read that single people should not pay into this fund. Remember, single (not parents) and elderly people pay taxes that go toward schools and neither have children in schools. We all contribute to the pool.
23
@J. G. Smith
Not to mention that single people can also get sick, and they may also have to care for parents or siblings at some point.
4
Republicans pay lip service, not taxes.
17
Half the country is made of single people now, they work twice as hard as married folks, but they dont seem to get any kind of leave benefits. Thats discrimination in the very first place!! Why not make it beneficial for single people too, so they can think of marrying, and if not married then they can contribute to community in different ways.
15
Many single people will need to take care of elderly parents or other relatives sometime during their working life. For people supporting themselves without a partner earning a wage this could be financially devastating. The Democrat’s plan would provide assistance to these people too.
21
“Family caregiving” is addressed. Do single people not have children, parents or other family?
8
@Darrie I appreciate your point of view. The assertion that single people work "twice as hard as married folks" is completely without merit. And by the way, trying to manage kids and a career and a household is way more difficult than when I was single. By FAR.
9
The Republicans have no intention of implementing paid leave in any form. They just want to look better for the 2020 election and mitigate their losses. They have never supported paid leave and rarely supported unpaid leave. Reducing Social Security to pay for leave will be devastating for people who need paid leave the most. Imagine a 30 year old who takes 6 months maternal/paternal leave and then 35 years later have Social Security benefits reduced by 1/2 year of salary and 35 years of interest. It would wipe out Social Security for poor people.
This article just passes on Republican hypocrisy.
57
Maybe a glimmer of hope for our country with this almost bipartisan moment.
1
So considering the Republican plans for “paid” family leave, the answer to the question in the headline is simple. The Republicans don’t really support it and are only willing to pay lip service to the idea.
33
Conservatives are still trying to protect corporate interests! Borrowing paid leave in advance isn't much of an improvement. It's like borrowing a loan to pay off medical debt. It won't change the fact that you're still in debt.
14
My question is also: would these policies apply to all workers, or only businesses with over 50 employees like FMLA? Similarly, FMLA can only be claimed by employees who’ve held their position for over a year. I am a nurse-midwife in a small mountain town; very few of my patients qualify for FMLA for maternity leave. Many of my patients are self-employed, small business owners in town, or work multiple part-time or seasonal jobs in the tourist industry. Even my own job is in a small, privately owned medical practice, and not eligible for FMLA; We can barely afford to cover 6 weeks of UNpaid leave for our providers (Thanks to insanely low Medicaid reimbursement rates for obstetric care and a growing percentage of our patients on Medicaid...but that’s another story entirely!). Lack of parental leave is a HUGE issue; it’s rare that I see a father able to take more than a day or two off for the birth, and common that I have to write work releases for tearful, stressed new mothers even before a 6-week postpartum appt when they can’t afford a longer recovery. And lest we forget, then the newborn needs Very Expensive childcare! Add a tax! We need government-funded leave accessible to ALL families, without borrowing from our own Social Security (which will likely be insolvent by the time we Millennials reach retirement age anyway). The current situation is inhumane, and my exam rooms are often full of financial distress instead of health and joy.
31
@Honeybee You're asking the people you're criticizing's children to pick up the tab for you in your old age. That attitude is the best way to ensure that there will be nobody around to pay in or provide the essential services you'll need in a nursing home etc.
2
None of the options discussed in this piece are workable. If it were me, I would back at work as soon possible. Employers should pay for it just as they pay for employee vacations.
2
We should pay for it the same way we paid for the recent tax cut -- claiming that helping parents and caregivers will pay for itself by making workers more productive, and in reality just adding it to our national debt.
9
perhaps, in a wonky plan, the funds can come from what remains of private insurers.. paid in full by the businesses of course.
2
To assert that the Republicans have "embraced" paid leave and then explain that they suggest having individual claimants finance their own paid leave via a reduction in future Social Security benefits is just a wrong-headed. First, remember the GOP considers Social Security to be socialism and is looking for ways to cut benefits. So any suggestion from the GOP of using SS benefits in advance ought to be viewed with suspicion. Second, there are already growing concerns about the adequacy of savings for future retirees. It is a terrible idea for young families to put themselves in worse position for their future retirement by using those funds to support paid leave. Bad economics from a party that cannot be trusted.
46
If an employee is paying for his or her own parental leave, its not paid leave, is it? The employee is in essence just taking out a loan.
51
@Benjamin Ochshorn Ah, but no. Everybody pays into it and every time you get a need you take out of it. So it's a transfer from employees who don't have families to employees who do have families. The Army has family leave. I had one subordinate who had been in the Army for four years and spent half of it on pregnancy leave or light duty and another subordinate who had instead been in the Army four years and spent half of it deployed. And I was chastised because I preferred the latter in recommendation for promotion.
6