FAMILY Act is the way to go

Recently, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) called for an expansion of the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act, or FMLA, criticizing the current law as “insufficient.” He’s right. For many workers, the option to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for qualifying reasons is not an option at all-at least not a viable one. With more than half of American households holding less than one month of savings in emergency funds, most families lack the ability to sacrifice their paycheck just to care for a new child, an ailing relative, or the complications of a family member’s military deployment.

Yet Rubio’s plan is utterly insufficient as well. In his proposal, businesses would receive a 25 percent tax credit for offering paid leave instead of the unpaid leave of FMLA. Given that only 12 percent of private sector employees currently have access to paid family leave, it seems doubtful that the business community is aching to provide this needed benefit, if only they had another tax credit to make it all possible. Even if the credit did work, the entire funding structure of Rubio’s plan involves lost tax revenue, further expanding the deficit at a time when most Americans are looking for the opposite outcome.

{mosads}A better alternative exists in the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act, or FAMILY Act, which requires employers and employees to come together to fund up to 12 weeks of paid leave for qualifying events. Workers would be able to receive 66 percent of their salary, with a maximum benefit amount of $1,000 per week. This proposal strengthens families and the middle class, and provides the broadly-shared opportunity to focus on family and medical needs for short periods of time, without having to leave the workforce.

The FAMILY Act is also affordable, funded through contributions by employers and just 0.2 percent of employees’ wages. This allows for a maximum contribution of just $237 for a high-wage earner for an entire year, capped at the same rate as Social Security taxes. The Act is also affordable for the government, using employment data already stored with the Social Security Administration, and free of the deficit-busting tax credits of alternative proposals.

Critics of the FAMILY Act argue that it will harm women in the workforce, making them more expensive to hire. Yet the data suggests otherwise. If the cost of replacing a worker in a high-turnover position is approximately 16 percent of their annual salary, the benefits of retaining a worker make it a much more effective proposition from a business perspective. When Google expanded paid family leave policies, they reported a 50 percent increase in the retention of female workers who gave birth.

Perhaps even more damaging to the “harms women” argument, the FAMILY Act applies equally across genders. This encourages more fathers to access parental leave-a feature which should bring delight to Republicans eager for more paternal involvement in family life-and equalizes the impact across all genders. If both men and women are able to take affordable paid family leave, it becomes less likely that women would be targeted for taking advantage of a law that men will be using as well.

The argument over paid family and medical leave boils down to who we are as a country versus who we need to be. While the FMLA leaves a full 40 percent of American workers without even unpaid leave, the FAMILY Act would cover everyone. This helps take us toward an economy that works for all. Workers who need time off for family and medical reasons can afford to take it, and companies are able to retain experienced employees with valued skill sets. Republicans and Democrats alike should call this legislation what it is: The most pro-family values proposal to come before Congress in a long time.

Michael Connolly is a member of the Truman National Security Project’s Defense Council. Views expressed are his own.