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While the majority of Americans agree that individuals should be able to take paid time off from work to attend to their family at critical times, including the birth or adoption of a child or the serious illness of a family member, there is substantial disagreement, especially among businesses, as to how that paid leave should be funded and administered. Heather Boushey, Senior Economist at the Center for American Progress, has newly provided a thoughtful and detailed proposal, a proposal that she herself states is a variation on some themes that fellow colleagues have been discussing for some time: funding and administering family leave insurance via the already existing social security system.

According to Boushey, this new program, which she calls Social Security Cares, is an “ideal way” to finance paid family leave.  She argues that the bureaucracy is already in place to finance the system and deliver checks, and the system, that contends with retirement and disability matters already includes a structure to “establish the criteria for eligibility that takes into account a variety of circumstances.”

She also states that Social Security Cares would benefit nearly all workers by being inclusive of low wage, young, or part-time workers in addition to full-time and middle and upper wage workers.  Furthermore, she indicates that Social Security Cares would encourage both men and women to take time off to provide care, an interesting point where today the majority of men and women are in the workforce and most families no longer have a stay-at-home caregiver.

Social Security Cares would entail the following:

• Workers will be able to access social security benefits for income when they experience birth or adoption of a child, the worker’s own serious illness, or to care for a seriously ill family member, for 12 weeks per year;
• The program will cover every worker currently covered by Social Security, which covers almost the entire labor force;
• Eligibility will be based on a worker’s lifetime employment history and will use reasonable terms to enable young, part-time, and low-income workers to qualify;
• The cost of the program will be minimal, and could be financed in many ways, including adding a small increase to the payroll tax.

Boushey makes sure to provide substantial detail throughout her proposal.  She also underscores that the Social Security Cares program is not a panacea, and that additional changes need to be made to other laws, including the FMLA, to ensure that the program would be fully effective.

• Leave , Policy , Workplace