More Nanny-Statism From Hillary

October 18, 2007

Hillary Clinton has conducted an impressive campaign to get the Left to forget her vote on the Iraq war. Over the last few weeks, she has offered a blizzard of nanny programs designed to bolster her standing with traditional liberals, including a program to give each newborn a $5,000 bond. Now she wants to have the federal government fund an expansion of the Family Leave Medical Act to the states:

Speaking in New Hampshire, Senator Clinton yesterday announced a plan to expand paid family leave laws on the state and national level.
"Too many Americans feel trapped between being a good parent and being a good worker," Mrs. Clinton said. "It's about time we stopped just talking about family values and started pursuing policies that truly value families."

Under Mrs. Clinton's proposal, the federal government would spend more than $1 billion a year to encourage states to operate their own paid family leave programs with a goal of having a program in every state by 2016. In addition, Mrs. Clinton also hoped to expand the Family Medical Leave Act to cover an additional 13 million workers. The act provides unpaid leave to new parents, workers caring for sick family members, and those recovering from illness. In addition, the presidential candidate said she would increase funding for child-care programs.

A spokesman for the Republican National Committee, Danny Diaz, criticized the proposal's cost, saying, "Hillary Clinton's agenda for working families is pretty clear: higher taxes to pay for outrageous spending proposals totaling more than $750 billion." A policy advisor to Mrs. Clinton, Brian Deese, said the proposal's $1.75 billion-a-year cost would be covered by closing a loophole on tax shelters, which he said would raise $26 billion dollars in revenue over 10 years, according to congressional estimates.

"Closing loopholes on tax shelters" is typical language for tax increases. Tax shelters get created by Congress to encourage particular types of investments. People then follow the incentives provided by Congress and invest their money in those ventures. Later, politicians decide they need the money for pet projects, and "close loopholes on tax shelters", effectively trapping investors into a bait-and-switch tax hike.

A flat tax, or even the Fair Tax, would fix this process. This demonstrates why neither will ever get through Congress, especially a Democrat-controlled House, where tax policy originates. The lucrative nature of opening and closing these "loopholes" provides far too much power for tax-and-spend politicians of both parties to ever eschew.

And so, once again, we have Hillary raising taxes in order to pay for expanded entitlements. The FMLA already covers all businesses in the US that employ 50 or more people, giving employees 12 weeks off in any given 12-month period for their own serious illnesses or those of their immediate families, for birth, or for adoption. The floor of 50 or more employees was necessary to keep small businesses from incurring undue costs of compliance, since small businesses would find it much more difficult to absorb the temporary loss of staff that would follow.

Hillary didn't provide any details for her expansion, but Chris Dodd wants her to co-sponsor a bill right now — which leads us to our next question. Hillary has been in the Senate for almost seven years. Why hasn't she offered any of these programs during her tenure? Since the Democrats took over the Senate this year, they control the agenda — and yet Hillary hasn't bothered to produce any of these as legislative initiatives. Has it occurred to her that she could propose these as bills now? Or would that have interfered with her efforts to carve out a moderate legislative record on which to win a general election for President?

UPDATE: The New York Times has more:

The law covers businesses with more than 50 workers. Mrs. Clinton would lower that to 25, covering an additional 13 million people, her campaign said. …
Mrs. Clinton’s advisers said they would work with Congress and industry to expand the federal law with an eye toward flexibility and supporting the needs of small businesses. They said Mrs. Clinton would also support guaranteed paid sick days through new legislation, a program that has had Democratic support on Capitol Hill for some time.

"With an eye toward flexibility and supporting the needs of small businesses"? Ask businesses now, small and large, how "flexible" the FMLA makes them now. Small businesses do not have "needs" for more government mandates on leave or sick days. Both are better left to the labor market. The expansion of FMLA to smaller businesses will make them less competitive against larger firms who can absorb that federal mandate easier and will force them to spend more on labor, driving up their prices and making them uncompetitive.

The "needs" Hillary wants to address are her own.

Source: Captain's Quarters

Posted by Hillary · Filed Under 2008, Commentary, Editorials/Opinion, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Lies

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