Clinton Asks for Broader Family Leave

President Clinton proposed spending $20 million to help states find ways to offer paid leave to working parents in need. Americans should not be forced to choose between their family and their job, he said Saturday.

Clinton also said in his weekly radio address that he wants the family and medical leave law he signed in 1993 expanded to include 10 million employees of small companies not covered now.

Republicans reacted coolly to both ideas.

Over the last seven years, the law has allowed more than 20 million Americans to take as many as a dozen weeks of unpaid leave to care for a newborn child or deal with a medical crisis at home.

“Today there are still large numbers of families who need to take leave from work but can’t afford to give up the income,” the president said.

The $20 million would fund competitive grants to help the states develop new approaches to making paid leave more available.

Clinton’s plan drew GOP criticism.

“The president told us he would never demand that taxpayers pay for people to leave work,” said Rep. J.C. Watts Jr. (R-Okla.), chairman of the House Republican Conference. “Now he wants the states to do it out of working Americans’ pockets. This is wrong.”

Clinton said the issue has touched the lives of so many families, including his own.

“I’ve often wondered how my own mother, when she was a young widow, would have been able to go away to train as a nurse if my grandparents hadn’t been there to take care of me,” he said.

“My mother and I were lucky. So were many other American families. But none of our families should have to rely on luck alone.”

The administration says that in 85% of cases, family leave costs employers nothing.

“In fact, in many cases it has actually helped save them money by cutting down on turnover and reducing the expense of training new workers,” Clinton said.

In the GOP’s weekly radio address, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush criticized Clinton for threatening to veto a Republican-sponsored bill that would cut income taxes for married couples by eliminating the so-called marriage penalty for dual-income families.

The bill, approved by the House, would cut income taxes by $182 billion over 10 years for married taxpayers. Clinton dislikes the legislation’s cost and timing.

“Unfortunately, the Clinton-Gore administration doesn’t believe that America’s married couples can be trusted to keep more of what they earn,” Jeb Bush said.