Americans overwhelmingly support paid family and medical leave (PFML) as part of a broader set of policies to help them balance work and family life. Despite popular support, federal policymakers have historically struggled to coalesce around any one national model for PFML. The launch of the Bipartisan Paid Leave Working Group in 2023 marked a turning point in efforts to build a consensus. After several years of research, outreach, and discussion, the group has been quietly making progress on workable, bipartisan plans.
The most recent product of that work, the bipartisan More Paid Leave for More Americans Act (MPLMAA) sponsored by Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and John Boozman (R-Ark.), offers an innovative path forward. Their bill would provide federal support for states to introduce their own paid-leave programs and harmonize them with one another and with those already in place. Fourteen states and the District of Columbia operate paid leave programs, covering about a third of American workers. The Senate bill would make it easier for states to cover the other two-thirds by addressing two significant obstacles in designing and implementing PFML programs: substantial start-up costs and potential administrative burdens on multistate employers.
The Gillibrand-Boozman bill would establish a national framework along with grants that would set minimum standards for both new and existing state PFML programs. Doing so would allow Congress to institute federal guidelines and accountability measures and to create an interstate paid leave action network (I-PLAN) to help states harmonize their policies.
Building on the House bill
The Senate proposal builds on the companion House bill by providing a supportive framework, with federal accountability, for new state programs. At the heart of both chambers’ legislation is a state paid leave public-private partnership grant program. This program would be competitively administered by the Department of Labor (DOL).
To qualify for a federal grant, a state program would need to offer a minimum of six weeks of paid leave for at least one of the reasons specified in the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA); put in place criteria for employee and employer classification, adhering at a minimum to the definitions used in the FMLA; follow minimum standards specified for wage replacement rates as well as maximum weekly benefits; and establish a public-private partnership model to carry out some administrative functions of the program.
The Senate version is similar to the House bill but is less prescriptive in certain areas. For example, the House bill would require states to provide parental leave to qualify for the competitive grants. The Senate version would retain states’ flexibility to choose which of parental, medical, caregiving, and military exigency leave they would like to provide, but prioritizes states that provide parental leave for the purposes of the competitive grant.
Additionally, the Senate bill would give states broad discretion on matters such as whether the employer or employee would be responsible for paying the premiums to fund the program and at what rate, and details of the required partnership. But the Senate bill has several prescriptions for minimum benefit levels.
For example, it specifies a minimum level of generosity for the wage replacement formula. The bill uses the federal poverty level (FPL) for a four-person household to establish a minimum wage replacement formula that sets it progressively higher for lower-earning workers. For workers earning less than FPL for a four-person household, the replacement rate would need to be at least 67 percent; for workers between 100 percent and 200 percent of FPL for a four-person household, the minimum replacement rate formulaically phases down to 50 percent; for workers earning 200 percent or more of four-person FPL, the minimum replacement rate would be 50 percent.
The emphasis on minimum replacement rates provides states with flexibility without sacrificing standards. While it gives states the option of using a progressive replacement rate formula, it does not mandate it. Programs modeled on New York, which has a flat 67 percent replacement rate, or Virginia, which has a flat 80 percent replacement rate, would meet the Gillibrand-Boozman bill’s requirements.
However, the requirements for maximum weekly benefit specified in the bill could also conflict with this type of program design. States would be permitted to cap benefit amounts by a weekly maximum, as is current practice in each state with an existing contributory PFML program. The Senate bill stipulates that this weekly maximum must equal at least 150 percent of the state’s average weekly wage (SAWW), a standard far above what state programs require now. On the high end, Oregon caps maximum benefits at 120 percent of SAWW. The fact that no state currently comes close to meeting the 150 percent SAWW minimum suggests that this provision could be a barrier to broader adoption among states.
The Senate bill would also establish the I-PLAN program, whose primary duty would be to develop an interstate agreement for PFML states programs to join. The agreement, in turn, would create a policy standard to harmonize activities across states — for instance, by standardizing the definitions of key terms such as “family members” and “‘covered wages” and creating the infrastructure to manage cross-state claims.
Current state PFML programs each use their own definitions of these terms, making employer compliance cumbersome, especially for multistate employers who must contend with a tangled assortment of PFML policies. The I-PLAN infrastructure could serve as a blueprint for states to standardize these requirements, simplifying the administration of PFML for multistate employers.
Federal grants would help states with startup costs
The Senate bill’s four grants can be categorized as falling under two broad umbrellas: supporting states with the cost of starting up and administering programs, and supporting states with the cost of harmonizing their programs with other states. Each of these grant programs would be authorized for three years.
The competitive public-private partnership grant program would award amounts between $1.5 million and $7 million to states, offering broad latitude in the use of these funds. It specifies 12 allowable uses, including startup costs, benefit payments, establishing and funding the required covered partnership, software purchase and technical assistance, outreach and information dissemination, program research and evaluation, and reducing the administrative burden on employers.
Implementation grants would be awarded to all eligible states, defined as those which adopt the agreed upon I-PLAN framework, and the award amount would range from $1.5 million to $8 million per state. These grants could be used for an array of administrative costs as well as to help small businesses offset the cost of employer payroll tax contributions.
Both grants provide timely and time-limited support for states when they need it. Contributory programs are, by their nature, fiscally self-sustaining, with premiums set to cover the cost of ongoing benefits. Administrative costs, which typically make up 4 percent to 6 percent of benefit spending, come from these premiums. But states setting up new programs also face short-term startup costs that run in the tens of millions of dollars for the first few years. Virginia, for example, is expected to spend $75 million on administrative startup costs for its new program in the first year alone. Federal funding to help defray these costs could reduce a substantial barrier involved in starting a new program.
The conforming grant programs would support the development of the I-PLAN. Eligible states participating in I-PLAN would receive an award between $1.5 million and $8 million. The other conforming grant would be for a single national intermediary that would facilitate the activities of I-PLAN. The national intermediary grant could be used for interstate meetings, produce an annual report detailing the activities of I-PLAN, and for outreach and education.
Keep the momentum going
The Senate proposal represents the best iteration of this work so far and shows what Congress can do when policy entrepreneurs set their minds on a goal and pursue it creatively. By recognizing the record of success at the state level and building federal support for that momentum, the MPLMAA’s architects are offering the best chance yet for Congress to make progress on paid leave.
A bipartisan, bicameral group of lawmakers has collaborated to design a flexible, creative path to expanding paid leave. The bill would provide states and employers the infrastructure to give workers the time they need to attend to family responsibilities while maintaining income and job protection. In the coming months, Congress can seize the opportunity to preserve state autonomy while bringing more paid leave to more Americans.
