The House Ways and Means Committee released the statutory text of its paid leave proposal earlier this week. As expected, it is a complicated mess rid

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2021-10-20 19:00:05

The House Ways and Means Committee released the statutory text of its paid leave proposal earlier this week. As expected, it is a complicated mess riddled with design problems that could be easily fixed. In this post, I will outline some of the issues with the proposal with a focus specifically on the case of parental leave for the birth of a child.

The problem with this formula is that it has no minimum benefit amount. This is a change from the prior Democratic proposal, the FAMILY Act, which included a minimum benefit.

The lack of a minimum benefit means that otherwise eligible people with low earnings, e.g. part-time minimum wage workers, will receive so little from the paid leave program that it will not be practical for them to take advantage of it.

This problem can be solved by establishing a minimum benefit equal to at least the federal minimum wage, which is $290 per week.