DeLauro Testifies on FAMILY Act at Ways & Means Committee Hearing on Paid Leave

WASHINGTON, D.C. — (January 28, 2020) Today, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (CT-03) testified at the House Ways & Means Committee hearing on "Legislative Proposals for Paid Family and Medical Leave" to discuss the FAMILY ACT, her legislation that would create a universal, gender-neutral, national paid family and medical leave program. A full video of her testimony can be found here, and below are her remarks as delivered:

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate being here today. And to Ranking Member Brady, thank you as well for welcoming me here today, as well as I want to recognize the Chair of the Worker and Family Support Subcommittee Congressman Danny Davis. I appreciate all of you and all of the members.

To start, I also would like to take a moment to honor the late Congressman Pete Stark, who was a longtime leader of the Ways and Means' Subcommittee on Health. And I want to, before I introduced the FAMILY Act I worked with Pete on it. His staff and mine worked on this for years ahead of introduction. I relied on his expertise on paid leave, and without him I doubt we would have been able to fashion the bill that we have today.

But now, paid leave is finally at the center of our public discourse.

The issue and the environment have collided. The Ways and Means Committee has hosted one full committee hearing on paid leave, one subcommittee hearing, and now this one. Chairmen Neal and Davis have taken this issue to the forefront of the agenda for Ways and Means. And we are closer than ever to making this a reality for families.

And none of this would be possible without the coalition led by the National Partnership for Women and Families. They have fought tooth and nail to bring this issue to the forefront, building on their legacy of securing the Family and Medical Leave Act, the most consequential social policy enacted into law in the last 30 years.

The biggest economic challenge of our time is that people's pay is not keeping up with skyrocketing costs. Few can afford to lose several weeks' worth of wages, whether for an ill loved one or the birth of a child. It pushes them over the edge.

Yet, few have the support they need in the form of paid leave. In fact, fewer than 40 percent of working people have access to paid leave for a serious personal illness. Only 19 percent have access to paid leave to care for a family member.

And while more and more states, as well as private businesses, are implementing paid leave, it should not depend on your zip code. Paid leave is an economic necessity critical for economic security.

This is an issue that is very personal to me.

In 1986, I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. I was working for the then Senator Christopher Dodd. I went to him on a Thursday and told him I would be hospitalized on Sunday and also said to him I didn't know whether or not I was ever coming back. What did the Senator say to me? He said, "Rosa, go and get well, no matter how long it takes. You are still my Chief of Staff, you do not have to worry about your paycheck." I was a staff member, three kids in school, and we were concerned about how we were gonna be able to make it. And with the support of my family and my friends, and yes my employer, by the grace of God and biomedical research, I recovered, and I have been cancer-free for over 30 years.

[Audience applause]

Two years ago–thank you, thank you–two years ago, my mother was dying, 103 years old, boy was she a feisty person. [Laughter] I got to be by her side. She was also on the City Council for 35 years in the city of New Haven. But I got to be by her side. For 6 weeks: every day and every night. I could do so, no one told me as a Member of Congress that your job isn't there, that you are not gonna get a paycheck.

It was a blessing, a blessing that cannot be there just for staffers or for members of the Congress. The United States needs a national paid family leave policy and we need it now.

So, after three years of careful deliberation and coalition building, I introduced the FAMILY Act with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand in 2013.

The FAMILY Act sets out a gold standard for paid leave for working people, provides up to 12 weeks of partial wages to take time away to address a serious personal or family health issue, to care for a newborn or newly adopted child, or for circumstances arising from a loved one's military deployment or serious injury.

It is self-funded through payroll contributions from employers and employees of just two-tenths of 1%—two cents per $10 in wages.

It has a record 203 cosponsors in the House, 34 in the Senate, it is bipartisan. So were similar proposals in the states.

So far, nine states, including the District of Columbia, have passed paid leave programs. They go even further in terms of leave duration, family members covered, wage replacement offered, or employment protections. We can learn from those innovations.

And we can learn from the businesses who support paid leave. Main Street Alliance, American Sustainable Business Council—close to 100 businesses or business leaders support the FAMILY Act.

I'm so glad to see my colleagues on the other side of the aisle supporting paid leave in such form. Because the issue is not partisan. It is important proposals, however, do not harm our people in the process. Many of the proposals as currently written will force workers to put their retirement in jeopardy by taking from Social Security, or putting families with young children at risk when they need that help the most. Income support only for new parents is not enough. 75 percent of workers who take FMLA currently do so to address the serious health condition of their own or a loved one.

Let us provide paid leave the families and workers need and they deserve. Celebrating middle-class families is not enough. We need to elevate them, and we can do that with the FAMILY Act.

I apologize for going over time, and thank you very much for allowing me to be here this morning.