Okay, so you’ve probably guessed. It’s some right-wing think tank, right? Of course it is! Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Ivanka Trump have been working on what they call “paid family leave.” It’s more like “borrowed” family leave, in which the employee robs her retirement savings in order to take time off to deal with family circumstances. It’s profoundly damaging to women, in particular, so of course the organization behind the idea is the reactionary Independent Women’s Forum (IWF), “a right-wing nonprofit organization purportedly focused on the economic policy concerns of women.”
While the details on Rubio’s actual legislation remain scarce, Social Security experts have already voiced their concerns over this approach, as any delay in benefits is seen as a cut to the program. What will happen to the roughly 80 percent of Americans who do not have access to paid leave, but who also want to keep their Social Security as is so they can retire on time?
The National Partnership for Women and Families released a statement Wednesday calling the proposal harmful for women.
“Such a plan would harm women in particular because they are still primary caregivers for their families and the wages they receive over their lifetimes trail men’s, leading to monthly Social Security benefits that are an average of 20 percent lower for women than men,” NPWF President Debra Ness said. “But no one should have to borrow against already low Social Security benefits in order to access the paid family and medical leave they need. Our country deserves to have the promise of Social Security protected.”
The IWF has been around for a long time, organized from the “Women For Judge Thomas” group that formed in 1992 to betray all of womanhood by attacking Anita Hill. Seriously, their whole thing was to attack Hill, and they had so much fun with that they decided to create a new group to attack all of us. They even lobbied against the Violence Against Women Act, because “wives instigate violence, including severe violence, against husbands more often than husbands do against wives.”
You’d think, given the White House’s current issues around domestic violence, that Rubio and Trump could find another think tank to associate with. This is a profoundly awful idea coming from profoundly horrible people.