The Washington Post: How to provide paid family leave without further indebting the nation

One of the most significant stumbling blocks for many new families is the lack of paid family leave for new parents. Every parent knows that those first few weeks and months at home with new babies are crucial and filled with things such as doctors’ appointments and routine check-ups. The amount of time that parents spend with their newborn plays an important role in the parent-child relationship as well as childhood and adolescent development. Giving every new mom and dad the flexibility to stay home for some of that time is something all Americans would like to see.

The question has always been: How do you pay for it? If government mandates businesses to cover those costs, employees and employers would suffer in the form of fewer jobs and lower wages. If taxpayers foot the bill for another massive government program, our unsustainable national debt of $22 trillion will only continue to climb.

That’s why we started working on a new idea last year to provide paid family leave to all new parents — moms and dads — through the Social Security system, without burdening either employers or taxpayers.

Our proposal, the Cradle Act, would allow both natural and adoptive parents to receive one, two or three months of paid leave benefits. A few decades down the road, those parents would then “pay” for the benefit themselves by delaying their own retirement for two, four or six months.

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These benefits will provide new families the help they need to stay home during those treasured first weeks and months. And it does so without increasing taxes on individuals or businesses, without new job-killing regulations and without adding to our national debt.

Nor would it weaken the Social Security system. At all. If anything, it strengthens it, especially in the long-term. Not only do beneficiaries fully repay the system by delaying their retirement, but by having and raising kids, they are making permanent, positive investments in the Social Security system itself.

In the short term, our plan redirects general revenue funds straight to the Social Security Trust Fund so that it never misses a dime. A similar mechanism was used to protect Social Security during the last economic recovery when President Obama directed general revenue funds to the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for a job-creating cut to the payroll tax.

Working families are the heart and soul of our nation. If young people can’t afford to marry and start a family, then the American dream literally has no future. Unfortunately, the cost of family formation and child-rearing today is higher than ever.

Some of this is government’s fault. For instance, federal policy artificially inflates the costs of housing, education and health care – three key challenges all young couples face. We both support reforms to lower the cost and increase access to all of the above for all folks in Iowa, Utah and elsewhere.

But in today’s economy of working moms and dual-earner couples, we also need updated social insurance programs that support workers at different times of their lives, rather than just starting at age 67. The CRADLE Act is a step in that direction.

To read the article in full, click here.

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