The Republicans Have A Family Leave Bill-- That Chips Away At Social Security Benefits

The U.S. is the only advanced country in the world without a paid family leave program in place-- and American women have been picking up on that. Paid family leave was a big issue in Hillary Clinton's campaign that she handled very well-- but which was almost entirely ignored by the media. And Ivanka Trump-Kushner has been talking it up as a theory that's supposed to put a happy face on her father's neo-fascist regime. Most of the Democratic 2020 hopefuls are all talking about it and in the last few weeks, several Republicans in Congress have introduced fake family leave bills that are all based around screwing with Social Security.

I think the worst of the bills is the one Ann Wagner (R-MO) and Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) introduced in the House Wednesday (with a companion bill sponsored by Marco Rubio and Mitt Romney in the Senate). The bill requires parents who want paid leave to take it out of Social Security retirement funds. It's a really pernicious, evil bill, pitting young families' immediate needs against future needs that the GOP has never believed in. Mike Lee and Joni Ernst proposed a similar bill (The Child Rearing and Development Leave Empowerment, or CRADLE Act)-- 12 weeks of paid leave in return for delaying Social Security benefits by around 6 months.

The bill allows parents to take 12 weeks leave-- just like the Democratic plans-- for about two-thirds of their salaries. But it would come out of future Social Security benefits. The parents would have to agree to either increasing their Social Security retirement age or retiring with reduced Social Security benefits for the first five years of retirement. The Democratic plans-- modeled on Bernie's 2016 platform-- are more generous, tend to also include leave for people taking care of sick family members and are paid for with a tiny increase in payroll taxes (0.2% split between employee and employer). The gold standard for Democratic proposals is Rosa De Lauro's FAMILY Act, which you can read here in it's entirety.

(Amy Klobuchar implemented her own family leave plan in her office-- and it was a stinker that embarrassed her. She has now scrapped it but it was based on 12 weeks time off with pay in return for staying at the office for three times that time off once they returned. She's run her office like a torture chamber for her employees and it has turned her campaign into a complete shambles.)

GOP reactionary Michael McCaul of Texas, was one of the Republicans who voted against equal pay for women this week. His progressive Democratic opponent, Mike Siegel, who has 2 small children of his own, gave me a statement on parental leave: "I support paid family leave without hesitation, and continue to be amazed by the so-called 'family values' party that treats mothers like cogs in a machine. Like the recent bill on equal pay for women-- which all but seven Republicans opposed-- I look forward to House legislation that will show where each representative stands on family leave. These are real kitchen table issues-- family leave and health care, equal pay and equal rights-- that will go a long way towards determining which party takes power in 2020."

In mid-March Barron's published a piece, Use Social Security to Pay for Parental Leave? That’s a ‘Terrible Idea,’ Experts Say, that explains why the GOP plans are so bad. Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, told Barron's that "this type of parental leave bill would undermine retirement security... Workers are simply not in a position to give up future benefits from Social Security."

Cindy Hounsell, president of the nonprofit Women’s Institute for a Secure Retirement, said the proposal did little to ameliorate the gender gap women face. “It is essentially an unpaid leave bill since you are using retirement money to pay for unpaid caregiving,” she said. Hounsell also favors giving women extra retirement credits for giving birth-- or to those who leave work to care for elderly parents or a partner.

Olivia Mitchell, a professor of insurance and risk management and business economics and public policy at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, was more succinct: “It is a terrible idea,” she said in an email. “Social Security is already facing insolvency such that benefits will need to be cut 25% to 30% soon.”

The Motley Fool agrees that the Republican plans are a terrible idea... the idea of allowing parents to essentially take out a loan against their future Social Security benefits is nothing short of terrible.

One of the biggest problems with providing parental leave benefits tied to Social Security is that the program doesn't have the ability in its current state to "lend out" a substantial amount of benefits. The trustees' report has suggested that outlays will outweigh revenue collection very soon, with the program's $2.9 trillion in asset reserves projected to disappear by 2034. Lending out money for parental leave benefits would put the program in an even more precarious position.

Parental leave benefits tied to Social Security may threaten economic growth and productivity as well. Even though these benefits would be paid via Social Security, rather than by an employer (thus saving that employer money), an extended absence for a key worker might result in reduced output or productivity for a company.

Furthermore, an analysis from the Urban Institute of Rubio's bill estimates that Social Security wouldn't recoup around 25% of the loans from a parental leave program as people die before reaching their claiming age, receive disability insurance, or simply don't work enough to reach the 40 lifetime credits needed for a retired worker benefit.

Whether it's the Cradle Act, Rubio's bill, or any other number of ideas that have been floated on Capitol Hill, borrowing against future Social Security income to cover a few months of paid parental leave is a terrible idea.

I asked a couple of the women Blue America has endorsed this cycle about the way the Republicans are approaching this issue. Audrey Denney, running for a rural district seat in the northeast corner of California, told me she loves that John Oliver clip up top. "The fact that the United States doesn’t have a comprehensive paid maternity leave and paid family leave program baffles me," she said. "We are one of the only countries in the world that has not passed laws requiring organizations offer paid maternity leave to their employees.  I’ve watched my friends and sister struggle with how to afford to deliver their babies, miss work to care for their newborns, and provide childcare when they go back to work. We’re seeing increases in maternal mortality and shocking rates of postpartum depression (as high as 1 in 5 in some states!). We have to be better at creating conditions where new moms can care for their physical and mental well-being-- and that starts with letting them take paid maternity leave."

Marie Newman is running for a Chicagoland seat held by reactionary Blue Dog Dan Lipinski, one of the incumbents who Cheri Bustos is trying to protect from a primary opponent (Marie). Yesterday Marie told me that "The reason I am a huge proponent of paid leave for families is that it helps our economy and increases quality of life for all Americans. Without paid leave, families postpone having kids and reaching their goals. It is not only balance of life and work that is critical to ensuring our children’s future, it is ensuring parents are enabled to care for the next generation."

Our progressive candidate in Arizona, Eva Putzova, just moments ago, said "While on the Flagstaff City Council I championed--and we approved--paid parental leave for our employees. The City could afford to offer only one month of this paid benefit to new mothers and fathers, but it's one month more than what employees had before. However, if we as a country value families, it should not be up to individual employers decide whether to support new parents or not. We should have a national program for new mothers and fathers regardless of their employment status or form of employment. There are many ways to structure the paid parental leave benefit, but it should never be at the expense of future Social Security benefits. We could expand Social Security to cover the cost of parental leave, make it part of universal healthcare, or propose a combination of these two and other strategies. Clearly, there are many models around the world we can adapt. What GOP is proposing is the worst possible option--exchanging economic security in retirement for financial support in parenthood earlier in life. Not only we can but we must do better."

Want To See The Democratic Party Get Back To It's Populist/Progressive Roots? Join Blue America In Endorsing Jimmy Gomez For Congress

Jimmy Gomez is a young guy from my neighborhood. When Xavier Becerra was appointed by Jerry Brown to become California Attorney General-- filling the vacancy created by Kamala Harris' election to the Senate last month-- my first thought was to wonder if Jimmy could be persuaded to run for the congressional seat. It's a deep blue seat and there's no Republican who could ever compete there. Obama got 83% of the vote in 2012. So it is going to be a campaign about who who would be the best Democratic candidate, the one with the best proven vision for the job. Before Jimmy decided to run, I started tweeting about his accomplishments and suggesting that Congress needed his unique combination of heartfelt progressivism and hard-headed ability to work with political adversaries to accomplish his goals. The first "push back" I got came, not unexpectedly, from Sacramento. It was from a top staffer of Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon. "Please," the staffer wrote to me, "don't do this. We desperately need Jimmy here in Sacramento."

Eventually Jimmy decided he would run-- and Speaker Rendon endorsed him, as did the President Pro Tem of the state Senate, Kevin de León and dozens and dozens of Jimmy's colleagues in the legislature. Monday morning, L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti weighed in on behalf of Jimmy-- and in the district that is the center of Garcetti's political power.

But when I looked through Jimmy's twitter account, what I found was endorsement after endorsement from grassroots activists who no one knows outside of their own communities-- like Cynthia Ruiz, a civic leader in El Sereno, Joselyn Geaga-Rosenthal, a board member in the Rampart Village and Echo Park Neighborhood Council, Luanna Allard, an officer in the Hillside Village Property Owners Association, Yolanda Nogueira, a board member of Highland Park's Chamber of Commerce, Tammy Membreno, Executive Director, Barrio Action in El Sereno, Lani Stapp, the impressive former president of Eagle Rock's Women’s Twentieth Century Club and Carol Jacques, the former president of the Mount Washington Association. These people are part of the backbone of the 34th district and they know exactly what Jimmy has accomplished as a grassroots organizer and later as a member of the state Assembly. This morning our old friend, former congresswoman, former Secretary of Labor and current County Supervisor Hilda Solis added her name to the growing list of public servants backing Jimmy. She wrote that "Jimmy Gomez has proven to be the State Assembly's most effective and dedicated champion for working families. He wrote the nation's strongest family leave laws, and stands up for equality in the workplace, in our schools and colleges, and for women's health care. In fact, I've been proud of him from the days he worked for me in Congress, from his years fighting for better health care for all at the United Nurses Association of California and throughout his career in the Assembly. We need him in Congress, protecting the people of Los Angeles, and I'm proud to support him." Moments ago-- just as we were about to press "publish"-- a very reliably sourced rumor started circulating in Sacramento that Kamala Harris had also endorsed Jimmy.

Saturday I had dinner with Jimmy and his wife Mary in a neighborhood diner. He talked to me about his vision for the people in his district and how he's gone about implementing it in the state legislature. Halfway through I cursed myself for not having a tape recorder. Knowing how busy he is organizing his campaign in a field that grows more and more crowded every day, I asked him if he would write down everything he had just said so I could run it as a guest post. I think he stayed up later than he wanted to to do it.

Making The Progressive Reform Agenda Work For Everyone, Including Those Who Need It Most
-by Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez

I’m proud of California because we are a state of firsts . . . we are the first to pass paid family leave, the 15 dollar minimum wage, paid sick days, and groundbreaking climate change legislation to reduce green house gas emissions and preserve our environment for future generations.

Yet, California isn’t perfect. Although our state continues to improve, we still rank last or near last when it comes to a number of social indicators: education, health, economic and environmental.

Why?

Why are the laws that we pass not working the way we intend and why are we not seeing the improvements we would expect to see?

Why are certain parts of the state getting left behind, while others are thriving?

I believe it's because a lot of our laws, policies, and programs are built on a misguided concept that anything that divides the pie equally must be fair and it must be effective in dealing with the problems we are trying to solve.

As we know, that is definitely not always the case.

There is a big difference between what is equal and what is equitable. And policy makers and politicians confuse the two. And just because it is equal doesn’t make it fair. And it definitely doesn’t make it effective.

A good example of this is California’s first-in-the-nation Paid Family Leave program that provides workers with a 55% wage replacement for up to 6 weeks to bond with a new child or care for an ill family member. Although the program has benefited millions of Californians, a Senate Labor committee report found that the people using the program the most were those making $82,000 a year or more, and those who were using it the least were workers making minimum wage or barely above minimum wage. Why is that?

Because it is unrealistic to expect a worker who is already living paycheck to paycheck on 100 percent of their salary to use a program for 6 weeks at only 55 percent of their wages. For many workers, California’s current Paid Family Leave program was simply an illusion. That’s why I authored AB 908, to fix this inequity and ensure all who pay into this vital program can afford to use it, regardless of their income.

Simply, my bill AB908 restructured the Paid Family Leave program and State Disability to increase the wage replacement for workers earning minimum wage to 70 percent, and 60 percent wage replacement for all other workers. This bill ensures that every worker gets the necessary funds to actually use the program and spend time with their newborn child or sick family member. When Governor Brown signed AB908, California was not only the first state to have paid family leave, it also became the first state to have a paid family leave program built on the concept of equity. A program that ensures that every family on the economic ladder gets what they need. And I’m proud of that.

Jimmy worked across the aisle to pass that bill with support from rural Republicans who genuinely wanted to embrace a way to help their own largely forgotten constituents. And he did the same thing with AB1550, the revolutionary climate change bill that wasn't just about wealthy homeowners who could get subsidies to buy solar panels and $80,000 Teslas. The bill requires that at least 25% of cap-and-trade funds go to projects directly in disadvantaged communities and another 10% to benefit low-income residents or communities anywhere in the state. Jimmy: "No matter where you live, no matter what you make, you deserve to breath clean air and drink clean water. With the signing of AB1550, we begin to bridge the green divide." Watch:



So Blue America is endorsing Jimmy's congressional campaign and we added him to our new ActBlue 2017-18 House page. Jimmy doesn't accept contributions from Big Oil nor from the shady tobacco lobbyists, the legalistic bribes that have stained so many in the California legislature, and his district is one of the least wealthy in the whole country-- although rapidly coming up-- so... please consider helping with whatever you can afford to contribute. There are other decent candidates running-- plus one that the charter school billionaires are financing-- but there is no one with Jimmy's vision and record of accomplishment who will be a natural to eventually take a leadership position among Democrats who desperately need new leaders in Congress.

Has Ivanka Changed Señor Trumpanzee's Mind About The Women?

Did you hear Paul Ryan and the #BetterWay boys howling in horror yesterday? Was the corpse of surrepticiously-worshipped Republican goddess Ayn Rand spinning in her grave? Nope; they weren't howling and she wasn't spinning-- despite Señor Trumpanzee's "outreach" to working women. Sure, as Wisconsin's top Republican talk show host, Charlie Sykes, tweeted soon after Señor Trumpanzee released his "plan" to sound like he wants to give women maternity leave, "Prediction: conservatives who would have be apoplectic if Obama had proposed guaranteed maternity leave, will fawn on Trump proposal." Maybe not. Like Trump's entire campaign, this proposal is a fraud. After all, his campaign says that the six weeks of guaranteed paid maternity leave will be paid for by eliminating fraud in unemployment insurance," which means "nothing happening here; no worries."

Señor Trumpanzee's seeming indifference to conservative orthodoxy might look meaningfull and interesting taken at face value, when you dig a little, there's nothing there to bother Ryan and his austerity agenda crew. Six weeks of childcare expenses deducted from taxable income isn't exactly Bernie Sanders.
Bernie, you'll recall, pressured Hillary into supporting 12-weeks of paid family leave last year, a program that will be paid for by a tiny tax increase. Kirsten Gillibrand's Senate bill would increase the payroll taxes for workers and companies by 0.2%, or about $1.38 a week for the median wage earner.

Trump, who was notorious as an employer for not offering his female employees paid maternity leave or child care of any kind, spoke last night near Philly about new mothers receiving six weeks of unemployment benefits paid for by eliminating fraud in unemployment insurance (the Ivanka Plan). Until now congressional Republicans have blocked Democratic attempts to move maternity leave legislation forward.

Trump[anzee]’s proposal calls for allowing taxpayers-- both those who take the standard deduction and those who itemize deductions-- to deduct child care expenses up to an amount equal to the average cost of care in the state. The deduction would not be available to individuals earning more than $250,000, or $500,000 for couples.

The proposal also calls for providing six weeks of paid maternity leave through unemployment benefits to parents whose employers don’t offer paid maternity leave.

The proposal will offer “spending rebates” of up to $1,200 a year to lower-income families through the Earned Income Tax Credit.

Historically, Trump has opposed the whole idea of married women working at all and he's been on the record saying women have to be treated "like shit." Back to Ryan and the #BetterWay boys for a moment. At BuzzFeed yesterday McKay Coppins reported that Republicans are starting to worry that Clinton might actually lose in November to a candidate who stands for nothing but himself.

For months, the prevailing wisdom within GOP political circles has been that Donald Trump stands little chance to win in November-- and a large number of the party’s consultants, fundraisers, and operatives privately preferred it that way. Though many of them are reluctant to say so in public, they argue that a Trump presidency would fracture their party, decimate the conservative movement, and wreak havoc on the global economy (not to mention their own industry).

But now, with polls tightening and Hillary Clinton’s illness temporarily sidelining her from the campaign trail, those Republicans are expressing alarm at Trump’s sudden electoral viability.

“It’s terrifying,” said one GOP consultant, who like others spoke to BuzzFeed News on condition of anonymity. “He’s not qualified … and it’s a massive problem. I’m not a fan of Hillary Clinton, but at least I feel like some of those jobs that are required for president, she could do them.”

“It would be terrible for America, and for the world,” said another Republican strategist, referring to a prospective Trump victory. “I can’t think of one good thing that would come of it.”

A third Republican said that after watching the Clinton campaign’s missteps in recent days, “I’m curled up in the fetal position watching The West Wing and drinking a basketful of deplorable liquor.”

UPDATE

We've been getting so many complaints from animal lovers that we're going to be retiring the little "Trumpanzee" joke, more or less. I think this is the last one, so enjoy.

Ryan Won't Be The First Hypocrite Elected Speaker-- Just The Most Right-Wing One

Paul Ryan-- of Ryan budget infamy-- is going to be Speaker. Don't listen to any of the Beltway-generated silly talk about him being "moderate" or "mainstream." The Freedom Caucus gentlemen don't like him because he's a grotesquely corrupt Establishment hack, not because he isn't right-wing enough. As chairman of the Budget Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee, Ryan has been raising bucketfuls of cash from Wall Street banksters and their K Street lobbyists. Since coming to Congress in 1999 Ryan has taken $5,420,978 in legalized bribes from the Financial Sector. Last cycle alone he scooped up $1,644,606 from these criminals, outdone only by Boehner, Cantor and 3 congressmen who were running for the Senate. And so far this cycle Ryan is at #5 with $490,875, just behind Speaker Boehner (R-OH), Majority Leader McCarthy (R-CA), Wall Street darling Patrick Murphy (D-FL), who they are desperate to get into the Senate, and the crooked chairman of the Financial Service Committee, Jeb Hensarling (R-TX).

But back to policy. The so-called Freedom Caucus vigorously opposes anything that makes life better for working families. One of their policy bêtes noires right now is the very popular paid family leave plan that Bernie Sanders is pushing in his presidential campaign. That isn't the kind of family values rightists support. And Ryan, of course, has been in the forefront of the fight against it. In light of that opposition, many found Ryan's insistence that if he were to take the speakership, he get plenty of time off for family time kind of hypocritical and elitist.

On June 4, 2009, the House passed the Federal Employees Paid Parental Leave Act, 258-154. A couple of dozen Republicans voted for it, but Ryan wasn't one of them. He voted no. Since then, he has consistently worked against Obama's attempts to mandate paid parental leave and one of the little horrors in his ugly budget proposal was a series of cuts to child care subsidies for poor working parents. Amanda Marcotte made the point last week that what's "wrong with Ryan’s libertarian-inflected conservatism goes far deeper than mere hypocrisy" and that his demand "to preserve his family time is a perfect distillation of the Ayn Rand-constructed worldview he has, where all the goodies are reserved for the elite and the rest of us can go hang."

And by “goodies,” I don’t just mean NFL tickets and first class plane tickets every weekend. Increasingly, the Republican worldview is one where even basic things like love, connection, and other basic human needs are being reclassified as privileges that should only be available to the wealthy.

Take, for instance, the great paradox of the so-called family values set, where they claim to be “pro-life” but also refuse to do a damn thing to take care of the lives they insist women bring into the world whether they like it or not. Republicans across the country are shuttering abortion clinics with pointless red tape. Now that they’ve come so far on eliminating access to legal abortion, they’ve turned their attention to cutting off access to affordable contraception and other non-abortion sexual health care, repeatedly calling for the elimination of funding that goes to pay for non-abortion services at Planned Parenthood. They have also waged war on the HHS for requiring that insurance plans cover contraception like they do other preventive health care services. If you take a look at the big picture, it’s clear that the end goal here is to make non-procreative sex a privilege available only to those who can pay cash for it.

But it’s also clear that Republicans really don’t want the people who are cut off from reproductive health services to have children, either. It’s not just that Republicans continually resist any efforts to make family and maternity leave available, even though getting leave is absolutely necessary for women who are giving birth and need to retain their jobs so they can feed their children. Paul Ryan is a big advocate for cutting food stamps, arguing that people need to work more if they want to eat. The only solution Ryan ever has for anything afflicting ordinary people is a demand that they work more hours, full stop, no debate about it.

In Paul Ryan’s America, you aren’t allowed to take care of your babies, but you aren’t supposed to have birth control or abortion to prevent babies, either. So what, exactly, are you supposed to do?

...You can’t have sex without making babies and you can’t have babies until you’re privileged enough to take care of them without any help or family leave. That’s the vision Republicans have of life for the rest of us: Sad, sexless, and lonely, with no children or even romantic partner to share our lives. Which is just as well, because the only purpose to our lives is to work overtime for very little pay to make our bosses-- and their beautiful, pampered families—even richer. (But hey, if you work hard enough, maybe you’ll one day make enough money to earn that sex and family life! Probably not, but keep plugging!) Paul Ryan isn’t a hypocrite for rubbing our nose in the fact that he has a lovely home life that he would deny to so many people. Reminding us that he’s a have and you are have-nots is what a self-appointed Galtian Übermensch is supposed to do.

This morning it was reported that Ryan picked slimy Establishment lobbyist David Hoppe, another Jack Kemp guy, as his new chief of staff. A longtime K Street creep, he's currently selling access at Squire Patton Boggs and as a senior adviser to the Bipartisan Policy Center, a nonprofit think tank that counts former Establishment Democratic and Republican leaders as its founders.

Ryan is far more right-wing than Boehner, who was plenty right-wing. And don't let any foolish media types tell you otherwise. This is going to be a bad few years with him running the House. And with Pelosi still keeping Israel and his incompetent, venal clique in charge of the DCCC, there is no way out. Even more reason to do whatever you can to make sure Bernie and progressives like him are elected next year.