Red States, Real Solutions: How Republicans Hijacked the Paid Leave Debate and Left Democrats in the Dust

As a longtime student of political history, I am fascinated with how, over long periods of time, political parties can move their positioning on an issue – sometimes to the polar opposite of where the party was, say, 50 years earlier. Whether it is their positions on foreign policy, world leadership, immigration, taxation or their relationships with Corporate America, our major parties prove themselves to be living, breathing, evolving entities.

We are watching one of those changes happening in real time now, as Republicans (rightly, in my opinion) reevaluate their relationship with working-class voters – whether they be traditional workers who may even be unionized or gig economy workers on the forefront of a rapidly shifting workforce landscape. Republicans’ current focus on employee benefits demonstrates how a party could at one point be playing “defense” on an issue and over time pivot to be seen as a “leader” on that same issue.

For most of the last few generations, the Democrats, in coordination with their friends in the labor community, have essentially “owned” in the public mind issues around healthcare, paid leave, benefits and worker protections. But as Mr. Dylan says, “the times they are a-changin’”.

For example, when it comes to paid family leave, the Republicans have completely turned the tables. While Democrats continue to cling to a vision of a government-run paid leave program funded by taxes – and have little progress to show for it – Republicans have experimented with engaging the private insurance market and using the tax code to incentivize employers to participate.

In fact, 10 Republican states, almost all in the South, adopted voluntary paid family leave systems by allowing the provision of the benefit in the private insurance market. Within this group, seven states adopted a legislative blueprint endorsed by the National Council of Insurance Legislators (NCOIL), which permits the sale of paid family leave insurance. Additionally, New Hampshire and Vermont, led by Republican governors, created programs that allow the provision of voluntary private insurance plans, but the state government plays a more proactive role in establishing the private market. In particular, they contract with a single insurance carrier to provide a base plan for the state. To establish a risk pool, those states purchased coverage for all state employees.

If you look back over the life cycle of the issue, most of the original paid leave laws were government-run programs in big blue states funded by taxes. Most of the programs enacted over the last five years are in red states, involving public-private partnerships and leveraging the private marketplace. In fact, even Congress is taking a page out of the Republican playbook, with the introduction of bipartisan legislation based on public-private partnerships and the leveraging of the insurance marketplace.

It’s safe to say that Republicans are in the driver’s seat of innovation when it comes to the paid leave issue, while stuck-in-the-past proponents of costly, new government programs are quickly being left behind. The times definitely are a-changin’.