Rubio’s family leave plan undermines Social Security

Sen. Marco Rubio’s proposal to fund paid family leave by cutting participants’ future Social Security benefits is nothing less than a Trojan Horse to undermine Social Security – and lays the groundwork for further damage to the program. Social Security is not a piggy bank or ATM to be used for other programs, no matter how commendable.

Our Social Security system is a foundation of economic security for workers and their families in the event of a worker’s retirement, disability or death, including a total of 4.5 million beneficiaries in Florida.

While expanding access to paid parental leave is important for all workers, it shouldn’t be financed by cutting future Social Security benefits. It isn’t fair to ask participants in a family leave program to forgo muchneeded retirement income later in life.

A 2017 Urban Institute study showed that trading paid leave for future retirement benefits is a raw deal for families. “Our projections show that participants in the proposed leave program would have to delay collecting Social Security retirement benefits for about twice as many weeks as they collected paid leave,” write authors Melissa Favreault and Richard Johnson. “Participants who took one 12-week leave would lose about 3 percent of their future Social Security payments, but parents who took four 12-week leaves over their lifetime would lose 10 percent of their Social Security retirement benefits.”

Rubio’s proposal would not only harm beneficiaries, it would weaken Social Security’s long-term financial health. Caregivers taking their retirement benefits in advance as paid family leave may never be able to reimburse Social Security due to premature death or disability. Former Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin estimates that Rubio’s program would cost Social Security $10.5 billion in the first year and $227 billion over 10 years.

In fact, by encouraging Americans to view Social Security as a savings account to be borrowed from, rather than income insurance, his proposal opens the door to privatization of the program — a long-cherished conservative goal. Since the inception of the program, Americans have regarded their contributions to Social Security as sacrosanct and available only for Social Security. It should stay that way.

MAX RICHTMAN, WASHINGTON Editor’s note: Richtman is president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.