Where Harris and Trump stand on paid family leave

Trump once shocked Americans with a pledge of support— that later was significantly reduced. Vice President Harris wants to implement things President Biden proposed but couldn’t get all the way through Congress.

Paid family leave is an ordinary concept for people in developed nations around the world, but a seemingly impossible dream for many American workers.

How impossible? There are only six other countries on Earth that have no guarantee of paid family leave for new moms, all of them small island nations in the Asian Pacific (Tonga, Papua New Guinea, Palau, Nauru, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands). Every other country provides for some kind of paid family leave—not only for mothers and not only for childbirth but other family health concerns.

Supporters of paid leave point to data that shows it would reduce employee turnover, improve retention, boost productivity and morale, and support the economy. They say while many small business owners would like to provide leave, they cannot afford to lose a competitive edge to a larger firm that doesn’t provide that benefit—so a federal or state law would give them a level playing field.

It’s been 31 years since President Bill Clinton signed the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), a modest landmark guarantee of 12 weeks of family leave—unpaid. But the FMLA does not include nearly two-thirds of the Wisconsin workforce due to company size or other conditions. Overall, nearly 2.5 million workers — 77% of the state workforce — have no paid family leave option through their jobs, according to the National Partnership for Women & Families (NPWF).

Advocates for paid family leave call it a difference-maker for addressing the ongoing labor shortage because it would benefit many parents who want to work but have family obligations to a child, elderly parent, or other loved one. Currently, according to NPWF, a typical Wisconsin worker who needs to take four weeks of unpaid leave would lose nearly $3,500 in income. 

The NPWF report said if women in Wisconsin “participated in the labor force at the same rate as women in countries with paid leave, there would be an estimated 22,000 additional workers in the state and $758 million more wages earned statewide.”

In 2024, the two major candidates for president have radically different records on paid leave, even though Trump initially gave the impression he would break the Republican mold of opposition.

Trump on Paid Leave

As a candidate in September 2016, former President Donald Trump signaled he would support six weeks of paid leave for new mothers. It was heralded as a “breakthrough” for a GOP nominee, though others saw it as an effort to close his wide gap in opinion polls behind former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—especially since he did not offer a credible way to fund it, something sure to hurt its chances of getting through Congress.

Upon becoming president, Trump’s promises were modified in order to largely benefit wealthy families (through a Child Tax Credit that skipped over Americans too poor to pay taxes), cut child care grant programs, and replace paid leave with a tax scheme that would let families “borrow” from their future earnings. During the pandemic, Trump signed a bill approving emergency paid leave, but the provision—in place from March to December 2020—exempted companies with more than 500 workers—shortchanging essential frontline workers at places like Walmart, Amazon, and so on.

Trump did sign a bipartisan bill that provided 12 weeks of paid parental leave to more than 2 million federal workers. Washington Monthly said Trump agreed to the provision in return for Democrats supporting his creation of a Space Force.

Harris on Paid Leave

Speaking in late July to the American Federation of Teachers, the country’s largest teachers’ union, Vice President Kamala Harris promised to continue pushing for a paid family program as well as universal preschool. 

“We see a future with affordable health care, affordable child care and paid leave. Not for some, but for all,” Harris said at the Houston conference. 

President Joe Biden pushed for 12 weeks of paid family leave, but the goal remained elusive, primarily due to full Republican opposition as well as one key senator who was a Democrat at the time. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia now brands himself as independent, but back in 2021, Manchin was single-handedly responsible for forcing Biden to drop paid family leave from his Build Back Better proposal. (Later, after Manchin also forced a reduction in energy and climate provisions, the bill was recast as the Inflation Reduction Act.) 

Biden had included a 12-week paid leave provision in his proposed budget for 2025 before dropping his quest for a second term.

If reelected, expect Biden—and Democrats at the congressional and legislative levels, as well as Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers—to push again in 2025 for paid leave, perhaps joined by a small number of Republicans who are also ready to see movement on the issue.