Making Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for the Fiscal Year Ending September 30, 2014 - Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. KING. Mr. President, I am delighted to join my colleague from Nebraska to introduce what I think is an important and commonsense and workable bill that could be passed in the next several weeks, and I think there will be broad agreement across the political spectrum.

The question we are answering is: What does Suriname, Papua-New Guinea, and the United States have in common? The answer is: They are the only three countries in the world that we have been able to turn up that don't have any provision for paid maternity leave. Every member of the industrialized world, except the United States, has some kind of coverage for paid maternity leave.

This chart gives the various levels. You will see in red is the United States, Suriname, Papua New Guinea, and that is it in the whole world. This is something we can do that will not affect our competitiveness, will not be a problem in our economic growth, and in fact I believe it will contribute to it.

Today a family who has a health crisis with an elderly parent, a child or has the joyful issue of a new child in their family has a terrible dilemma. The dilemma is: Do I stay home to take care of the child or the elderly parent in a health crisis or do I have to put food on the table by going to work because for every hour of work I miss I lose an hour of pay. That is a dilemma we should not put our people through.

As I have said, I believe this is a productivity issue. All of the discussions we have had in recent months about pay and gender inequity often come down to the issue of workplace flexibility, particularly in the case of women who are often the ones who are put in the dilemma I mentioned of having to choose between their earnings and family obligations. Women are the ones who are often trapped in this dilemma, and they are the ones who are asking for and seeking--quite reasonably--the same kind of flexibility that virtually every other working person in the world already enjoys.

I like this bill and agreed with my colleague from Nebraska to join in it because it is voluntary. It is not a mandate from Washington, it is not something that says every employer in the country has to do this, and there will be rules and bureaucracy and adjudications and all those kinds of things. No, this is a voluntary, incentive-based program that says every employer--not just those 50 and above or 100 and above or 500 and above--in the country will have this tax credit available to them that will allow them to offer paid leave to their employees.

I think this is the way we should approach this and not, as my colleague has said, with a one-size-fits-all mandate emanating from Washington. I think incentives are always better than mandates.

The other element that is important about this bill is it focuses on the people who are currently least likely to have some kind of paid leave available to them, and usually those are people who work on an hourly basis. That is whom this bill is focused on. The interesting aspect of the data is that as it goes up the income scale into salaried employees, more than two-thirds of American workers in this category already have a paid leave policy. It is when you get down into the working people--the hourly workers--that we have discovered the real problem lies. That is why I think this bill has an important focus on hourly workers, people who are covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act and people who otherwise are not going to have this kind of protection.

This is about flexibility. As I have talked to and listened to women's groups and advocacy groups, flexibility is always first on the agenda, and that is exactly what we are talking about, so people--men or women--don't have to make that agonizing decision, people who are living paycheck to paycheck don't have to make the agonizing decision between being able to put food on the table and pay the rent or staying home to take care of an ill child or an elderly parent or to stay home a reasonable period after the joyous occasion of the arrival of a new child.

It is also about productivity. I believe we will see an increase in productivity because people will not be preoccupied when they are at work. They know they are going to be there and they know they are going to have this protection and it takes away that agonizing worry and anxiety. It also--by giving people paid leave--will enable them to continue to contribute to the economy, and I believe it will actually be a positive stimulus to our economy.

Of course everybody says we are in competition with the rest of the world. Not on this. Every place else in the world provides this level of benefits so we are in a catchup situation, and I believe, as I said, I think we will see an increase in productivity and in economic activity.

Finally, it is about fairness. Frankly, to some extent it is about gender fairness. It is about fairness to working women who are expected in our culture to be the ones to take care of a sick child. That may not be fair, that may not be the wave of the future, but that is a fact today. It is about fairness to those working women who have to make a choice between putting food on the table or taking care of a sick child or taking the necessary time off after the birth of a child in order to have that event be a happy one and not an economic strain on the family.

I am delighted to join my colleague from Nebraska--the leader of the surf-and-turf caucus--on her brilliant bill that I believe is something we can come together on, on a bipartisan basis, and actually do something about and not just talk about the problem of income equality and not just talk about the problem of fairness and not just talk about the problem of flexibility in the workplace but actually do something about it in a practical and commonsense way that I think will have tremendous ramifications across the country.

I am delighted to be able to join her. I compliment the Senator from Nebraska for her work in bringing this forward, and I look forward to what I hope will be an expeditious consideration of her bill in the Senate and in the Congress. This is a change we can make that will make a real difference in people's lives across America.

I thank the Presiding Officer and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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