Clinton Seeks to Expand Family-Leave Benefits

President Clinton, in a bid to extend the reach of a popular family-leave law, on Tuesday moved to allow states to use unemployment benefits to provide paid time off for new parents of infants and adopted children.

The White House initiative would clear the way for states, for the first time, to use a pool of insurance money funded by employers’ contributions to pay mothers or fathers who choose to stay home after the arrival of a child. Under Clinton’s plan, states could pay the benefits for up to 12 weeks.

Flanked by three young families at the White House, Clinton noted that he is “especially proud” that the first bill he signed into law as president was the family and medical leave act, which requires employers to grant a worker facing a medical emergency or pressing family demands up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave. Since it became law in 1993, more than 20 million Americans have taken advantage of the law, which was opposed by many Republicans and business groups.

“The No. 1 reason families give for not taking advantage of Family and Medical Leave is that they simply can’t afford to take time off without a paycheck,” Clinton said. “The actions we take will go a long way toward alleviating that burden if the states take up the challenge.”

In the near term, however, only a small number of states is expected to use the latitude envisioned by Clinton. Before Tuesday’s announcement, only four states--Washington, Vermont, Massachusetts and Maryland--had sought federal approval to use the fund for that purpose. In five states--including California--where some form of paid disability leave already exists, there is far less likelihood that lawmakers would embrace the unusual use of the unemployment insurance fund.

In California, a disability fund paid for with a tax levied on employees last year paid 625,000 new mothers up to $336 per week for medical leave following the birth of a child, some for as long as a year. But in October, Gov. Gray Davis ordered the agency that manages that program to explore the costs and benefits of expanding it to provide paid parental leave for a broader range of potential beneficiaries, including fathers and adoptive parents.

Some states, especially those with the potential for high unemployment, may be reticent to adopt such a proposal since it could stress limited funds and face opposition from the business sector, experts acknowledged. But the president’s initiative, the experts said, could be taken as a significant gesture to make parental leave-taking more common among working parents at all income levels, especially among the low-paid.

“I see this as an emerging movement,” said Donna Lenhoff, general counsel for the Washington-based National Partnership for Women and Families. This Friday, Lenhoff’s organization plans to host a Washington meeting for state legislators interested in setting up paid parental leave programs, with at least 15 states represented, she said. With Clinton’s plan, she added, “the Labor Department has gotten out of the way and said to states, ‘if you want this option, go ahead.’ I see this as just the beginning and not at all a limitation.”

In the near term, however, only a small number of states is expected to use the new latitude envisioned by Clinton. Before Tuesday’s announcement, only four states--Washington, Vermont, Massachusetts and Maryland--had sought federal approval to use the fund for that purpose. In five states--including California--where some form of state-paid disability leave already exists, there is far less likelihood that lawmakers would embrace the unusual new use of the unemployment insurance fund.

In California, an employee-paid disability fund last year paid 625,000 new mothers up to $336 per week for medical leave after the birth of a child, some for as long as a year. But In October, Gov. Gray Davis ordered the agency that manages that program to explore the costs and benefits of expanding it to provide paid parental leave for a broader range of potential beneficiaries, including fathers and adoptive parents.

While acknowledging that many states may not adopt Clinton’s proposal, some experts saw the initiative as a significant gesture to make parental leave-taking more common among working parents, especially among the low-paid.

Although the idea of paid parental leave may be drawing new interest among states, Clinton’s announcement made clear that the use of state unemployment insurance programs remains controversial. Business groups on Tuesday roundly criticized the initiative as a way of forcing employers large and small to foot the bill for families’ choices.

“It’s not the employer’s place in our society to be picking up the cost of a very personal decision,” said Richard Berman, who heads the Washington-based Employment Policies Institute, a policy-research organization funded largely by the business community. “If the president believes this is an idea with strong societal support, it ought to be paid for by society as a whole--either out of the general revenue fund or as a special tax designed for that purpose.”

Since the early 1970s, Canada has used its unemployment insurance program to fund paid parental leave. All 15 countries of the European Union, plus Norway, pay for new parents to take time from work with babies, and most pay for those benefits from broad social welfare programs. But in the United States, the states’ unemployment insurance funds--established in the early 1930s as a response to the Great Depression--have only been used to pay workers thrown out of work by circumstances beyond their control.

Clinton’s proposal comes after several years of heated congressional debate over the role government should play in the care of young children. The president has proposed a raft of subsidies and tax breaks, largely to help low- and middle-income working parents pay for organized day care. Both sides have widely agreed on providing funds for after-school programs for older children. But most of his $21.7-billion package of child-care proposals has foundered in Congress, where opponents have faulted the president for failing to provide incentives to parents who wish to care for their young children at home.

By enabling states to provide such an incentive for new parents to stay at home, Clinton appears to have embraced a major plank of the Republicans’ child care philosophy. But Republicans have largely sought to use tax breaks as the way to reward families for caring for their own kids at home. Clinton’s choice of unemployment insurance as the source for that funding appeared to present many Republican leaders with a dilemma. And that ambivalence was evident Tuesday.

Unless Congress acts to block use of the funds to implement Clinton’s order, it is expected to become effective in 45 days. State lawmakers then would have to vote on the terms of the unemployment funds’ use in their state.