A feel-good piece of legislation passed the House on Thursday that would provide four weeks of paid leave for federal employees who are parents of new children.
It has its heart in the right place, but considering the federal government’s checkbook is already overdrawn to the tune of about $11 trillion, it’s fiscally irresponsible.
The Senate should reject the so-called Federal Employees Paid Paternal Leave Act and not send it to the president, who says he supports the bill and would sign it.
The bill, HR 626, passed largely along party lines, but enjoys some Republican support.
It would allow a federal employee whose family has a new child, or who adopts or fosters a child, four weeks of paid leave.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the program would cost $850 million over the next five years.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., has sponsored the bill every year for the past 10. Though it passed in the House last year, the Senate never took it up.
It’s easy to see why.
Parents already have the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act, which provides public and private employees 12 unpaid weeks to care for a new child. Parents who wish to start or extend their family can plan and save accordingly. Federal employees also receive paid vacation each year.
Maloney says the paid leave actually would save money because the $850 million cost is not new money — meaning those salaries would have been paid anyway — and the change would prevent costly turnover in the workforce.
The federal workforce, the largest in the nation, totals 1.8 million workers. How can federal employees being paid to stay home not result in overtime costs, temporary hires and other measures implemented to take up the slack?
Ultimately, the budget would grow, and it would do so while we’re struggling to climb out of a deep recession.
Meanwhile, federal spending has ballooned far above sustainable levels.
Maloney’s turnover argument is smoke and mirrors as well. Government turnover rates historically are low. In 2005-06, they were at 9.3 percent, compared to overall worker turnover of 23.4 percent.
Another worry is that many supporters of the legislation see it as a way toward mandating private employers to provide paid paternal leave. HR 626 “is an important first step toward what must be our ultimate policy goal of providing paid family and medical leave to all workers,” said Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif.
If private business wish to extend those benefits to their employees, they will. Many already do.
In 2002, the state of California passed the first paid family leave law in the country, and other states have followed.
California is not exactly the picture of fiscal health.
Now is not the time for HR 626.
