Don’t mix family leave, Social Security

Marco Rubio’s paid parental family leave bill might seem on first glance to be one of those things that are too good to be true.

For a Republican senator to show interest in a “liberal” issue like that is a welcome departure from Mitch McConnell’s flint-hearted rulebook. But look closely. The plan is better for Rubio’s image than for those whom it proposes to help. In return for up to two months off at reduced pay, moms and dads would have to delay their retirement or reduce their future Social Security benefits. That’s not good at all.

It’s already hard enough for young people, such as most new parents, to plan for retirement. By some estimates, more than four in every six households are already on track to run short. Rubio’s method would be a deceptively tempting deal with a harmful longterm price that would increase with each additional child.

Give Florida’s junior senator some credit for thinking about a problem that’s shamefully unique to the United States. Among 41 countries surveyed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), ours is the only one that does not guarantee at least some duration of paid maternity leave. Just to get

family leave took a colossal struggle in Congress. It was twice vetoed by President George H. W. Bush before Bill Clinton signed it into law.

But Rubio’s proposal is the wrong solution to that problem, and it’s particularly ill-timed given that Social Security already faces a severe funding shortfall in only 16 years. The system’s trustees warn that benefits will begin to outstrip incoming taxes in 2034, leaving it able to pay only 75 percent of benefits if taxes aren’t raised. Tomorrow’s pensioners can’t afford any further erosion in a system that, on average according to the OECD, replaces barely 49 percent of their pre-retirement income. Private pensions are on shaky ground as well, as more employers and corporate raiders seek to shed them.

The underlying flaw in Rubio’s bill reflects his party’s phobia against levying or raising any tax, no matter the purpose, and its ideological instinct for chipping away at Social Security . ...

The genuinely feminist National Partnership for Women and Families came out strongly against Rubio’s approach to family and medical leave as soon as he and its House sponsor, Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Mo., announced they would file it.

“We appreciate that Sen. Rubio and Rep. Wagner are looking for a way to provide the paid leave America’s families urgently need,” said the Partnership’s president, Debra L. Ness, “but a program that only covers parents caring for new children, provides no leave for family care and personal medical needs, and forces parents to choose between paid leave and retirement security is absolutely the wrong way to go. In fact, it is reckless, irresponsible and ill-conceived. This is a Social Security benefit cut for the working people who need Social Security the most.” ...

She noted that only 25 percent of the unpaid leave taken under the Family and Medical Leave Act that Clinton signed is to care for new children. The rest is taken for family or personal illnesses and injuries, to which Rubio’s bill would not apply. All told, an estimated 100 million Americans have no paid leave at their workplaces. Only 6 percent of the lowest wage-earners do. Social Security is the only income they’ll have in retirement.

Social Security is the ideal mechanism for closing this glaring gap in national well-being, but not in the way Rubio and Wagner propose. It’s an existing program that works efficiently, so that it wouldn’t need a new bureaucracy, and it’s nearly universal. It also spreads the cost uniformly among all workers and their employers. A better approach is the Family and Medical Leave Act proposed by Sen. Kristen Gillenbrand, D-N.Y., and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn. It calls for an additional tax of .02 percent — two cents on every 10 dollars earned — to fund 12 weeks of benefits equal to 66 percent of a month’s salary, capped at $1,000.

Rubio claims some common virtues with Gillenbrand’s bill. The major difference is the Republican refusal to raise any tax any time for any reason. If the party can’t shed that fixation, voters who want a responsible family paid leave policy will have to shed the party.