Center for American Progress panel: Paid Family Leave law subsidizes love for broke Californians

[Geee]

Daily Caller:

The Daily Caller attentively listened to panelists laud California’s Paid Family Leave (PFL) law when one expert began to expound on breastfeeding. There’s was even a chart. Suddenly, it occurred to TheDC that it was surrounded almost entirely by women.

Until that moment, it had been difficult enough staying focused. There were data points and statistics and survey results and public policy speculation and mutated theories on social justice. Hosting the panel was the Center for American Progress. Its massive office has a very sleek, modernist feng-shui-thing going on and the spread of whole wheat deli sandwiches, in retrospect, should have been sampled.

It was all a bit much to take in, even without the perky women, nearly all of whom were dressed in subdued, urban chic. It was a room full of hipster bank tellers.

Two of the panelists had just published a report on California’s six-year-old PFL law. Apparently, the program is going swimmingly. It allows employees — male and female — to take up to six weeks off to “bond” with a newborn or care for a seriously ill relative. It’s all paid for by a 1.2 percent payroll tax levied on every Californians’ paycheck.

The panelists — whose main focus, it seemed, wasn’t so much caring for the sick but having more time to coo over a newborn – said support for the program in California is “extremely high” among everyone (even small businesses!) with just a insignificant “minority” moaning and complaining. It all sounds so good. It’s a huge success!

There are only a few issues, said the panelists. Employers can still fire people for taking off work, not enough people are using the program and it’s going to take a lot of effort to make it a big f-ing deal (that is, “federal”). On the plus side, women love having more time to nurse their babies — as evidenced by the bar graph showing the approval of said nursers, which looked like a chart of Enron’s profits circa 1999.