Editorial roundup

Feb. 27

The Wall Street Journal

Paid family leave

One in five Americans is on Medicaid, and Medicare and Social Security will require huge future tax increases. Yet some in the ostensible party of limited government think this is the perfect time to add a new entitlement for paid family leave. Who wrote that book about Republican Party suicide again? …

Kristin Shapiro and Andrew Biggs recently laid out a proposal on our pages to open up Social Security to finance family leave, and it is gaining some traction on the right. New parents could choose to draw on their retirement benefits for some length of time, perhaps 12 weeks, in exchange for delaying Social Security payments for a roughly comparable period.

The plan would supposedly pay for itself because workers would merely change the time in their lives when they collect Social Security benefits. No mandate on employers, no payroll tax increase. Presto, a free political lunch.

The first problem is that this would shift the burden of providing the benefit from the private economy to government. Academic evidence shows that family leave keeps employees in their jobs and can make them happier or more productive, which is one reason many companies pay for it. But why pay when the government offers 12 weeks? …

Republicans would be making an enormous mistake to interrupt decades of business progress toward more generous family policies. CVS, Lowe’s and Walmart are among the companies that have announced new or expanded paid leave benefits since the GOP’s tax reform lowered the cost of wealth creation. Why not let faster growth and tight labor markets create more incentive for private family leave? …

The pressure to raise payroll taxes to finance Social Security and Medicare is already growing as more Baby Boomers retire. Complicate Social Security with new spending purposes, and the drive to raise the $128,400 income cap on the 12.4 percent payroll tax will be unstoppable. How do you like a 60 percent marginal tax rate?

Behind family-values platitudes is a question of whether government should pay for every benefit worth having in American life. Mr. Rubio and others think Republicans must compete with Democrats on government handouts, only less generous and targeted to people they like. With their latest budget deal, the GOP is staring at annual deficits of $1 trillion a year. Republicans should be reforming entitlements, not expanding them.