Congressional lawmakers have worked for years to develop a bipartisan framework for a federal paid family leave plan, but even after last year delivered rare agreement between Democrats and Republicans, a Tuesday hearing showed a thorny ideological divide remains.
Both of the major parties broadly agree about the need for paid leave, said Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, R-Pa., and chair of the House Subcommittee on Workforce Protections. He cited March 2023 U.S. Department of Labor data showing that only 27% of civilian workers and 6% of the lowest-earning workers had access to paid family leave through their employers.
What’s more, legislators appeared to make progress toward a solution with the introduction of 2025’s More Paid Leave for More Americans Act. The bill, drafted by a bipartisan group of representatives, would authorize DOL to issue state grants to fund six weeks of paid leave for birth or adoption and a measure of wage replacement between 50% and 67% of a worker’s income under a private-partnership model.
The bill also would establish an Interstate Paid Leave Action Network, or I-PLAN, which aims to bring states together to coordinate benefits, share data and generally harmonize policies.
I-PLAN is a “positive first step” from the perspective of employers, who face a complex leave administration landscape that must be coordinated with federal laws as well as short-term disability benefit systems, said Greta Kessler, vice president of employee health and benefits at Marsh McLennan Agency, who testified on behalf of SHRM.
However, the act has not advanced in the House since its introduction, and witnesses and lawmakers at Tuesday’s hearing noted that it lacks key protections for workers who would use the leave.
For example, it lacks job protection requirements that would prohibit retaliation against employees who take leave, said Elyse Shaw, director of the Center for Law and Social Policy’s education, labor and worker justice team. The law’s floor for participation is also set at six weeks of leave, a mark short of the 12 weeks of unpaid leave afforded by the Family and Medical Leave Act as well as the amount of paid leave offered under several state programs.
Shaw also criticized the private-partnership model proposed under the bill, stating that similar systems in states like Vermont and New Hampshire have seen lower levels of uptake compared to programs in other states that are directly run by a local government.
“When we think about the privatization of paid leave, we see that it causes a lot of confusion,” Shaw said. “When it’s administered by the state government, there’s a lot more education and outreach that is done by the government to let people know what their options are, what the ins and outs are of the programs and who is eligible.”
Congress has a long recent history of paid leave proposals that failed to gain necessary bipartisan support to advance. Funding mechanisms are a key sticking point; bills like the FAMILY Act, backed by several Democrats, propose a payroll tax, while others such as the 2019 Cassidy-Sinema plan would offer tax incentives to parents who take leave.
Adrienne Schweer, fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center, called the More Paid Leave for More Americans Act a “bold new framework” and said she hopes lawmakers will advance it to address workers’ needs. The bill incentivizes states to create their own path forward for offering leave, she said, which speaks to another concern legislators have raised about a possible federal standard.
“Not every state is going to have a policy that looks exactly the same,” Schweer said, adding that the bill’s I-PLAN component is important in that it would allow state administrators to better navigate complex leave laws.
But a more comprehensive federal paid leave guarantee is not only possible — given that several states have implemented such programs — but is also popular with the U.S. public, said Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and ranking member of the subcommittee.
“What hasn’t worked are voluntary and privatized schemes that leave millions of workers behind, and we should be clear-eyed about the risk of enshrining those laws into federal policy and permanently setting a ceiling where there should be a floor,” she said.
Mackenzie, on the other hand, expressed optimism about the bill as a step toward a federal standard.
“While this may not be everything that everybody is looking for, I think it is a positive development and a positive step forward that Congress should be taking.”
