Family Leave Tests What Politicians Value : Congress: Democrats hope to hang Bush on the horns of a veto dilemma, but their gutless bill won’t impress most workers.

Here’s a question for the millions of Americans who are in families in which both parents work, or who are working single parents, have or would like to have a baby, have to care for aged parents, or have a spouse who has been ill or injured: What do you call a politician who supports a bill requiring employers to give workers time off to care for newborns or sick family members, provided the leave is unpaid, 95% of employers are exempted and new employees and most part-time workers are not covered? The answer: a liberal.

The debate about “family values” that the Republicans have made so central to this year’s election campaign is about to move from the realm of speechmaking and flag-waving to the realm of legislative action, providing the Democrats with the opportunity to challenge President Bush’s commitment to families, and handing the Republicans a dilemma. But the nature of the debate shows how little understanding Americans have about what needs to be done if people are to manage work and family obligations in the modern world.

Late last year the House and Senate passed slightly different versions of a family and medical leave bill that would indeed require many employers to grant some employees time off to take care of newborns and serious family medical problems. Rather than reconcile their differences and immediately send a bill to the President for his signature or veto, House and Senate Democratic leaders decided to wait for the presidential campaign, hoping to place President Bush on the horns of a real dilemma. He vetoed a very similar bill in 1990, arguing that he opposed “rigid, federally imposed requirements” for employers, and that family and medical leave would reduce American competitiveness in the global economy and stifle the creation of new jobs. He has promised to veto this bill as well.

Americans like consistency. At the same time, many will wonder about a President who says he favors family values but opposes having the federal government help workers deal with the tragic choice of holding on to their jobs or caring for their newborn babies or ill family members. A veto opens President Bush to the charge that he is a hypocrite when it comes to family values, favoring only the values of families who can afford to have a wife always at home, and the desires of business over the needs of families.

But if Bush signs the bill, the Democrats can accuse him of doing so only to win votes, claiming that he acts on behalf of families only when forced to do so by the Democrats.

This seems like a no-win situation for the Republicans, one that they have only made worse by their own emphasis on family values for so much of the campaign. Unfortunately, once we look beyond the symbolism of this particular conflict between congressional Democrats and the President, we see that neither the Democrats nor the public stand to gain very much, at least in the short run.

Support for the Family and Medical Leave Act is widely described as the liberal position, and opposition as conservative. Certainly support for the bill does represent support for change, a central theme of Bill Clinton’s campaign. And if President Bush does veto it, he will surely use the occasion to accuse the Democrats of being “big-government” pro-regulation liberals. Yet in a world in which most of the economically advanced nations, including most of our most successful competitors, provide far more generous paid leaves than even the most liberal Democrats would propose, it is easy to conclude that even if the Republicans lose this battle--President Bush signs the legislation, or his veto is overridden--they have in many ways won the war.

Most people really seem to think that even minimal demands on employers--demands readily coped with by employers throughout Western Europe--are indeed very liberal, and that having the government help people cope with the competing demands of work and family is so radical as to almost be beyond debate. And the Democrats, for the most part, accept this. They propose their tiny reforms, constantly worried about being called “liberal” or worse, and when they win something they declare they have won a great victory, even when the legislation they have passed has huge loopholes and does very little to deal with the problem.

The Democrats have the Republicans in a tight spot on family values. I hope that the family and medical leave bill becomes law, and that the debate about it helps the American people distinguish between empty speechmaking and real legislating. Passage would be an important symbol to those who hope for a more humane workplace. But passage should not be mistaken for real change.