Oklahoma Congresswoman Bice Pioneers Nationwide Paid Leave Initiative

The bipartisan group attempting to make paid family leave accessible nationwide achieved a milestone this week — releasing the framework for possible federal legislation. Oklahoma’s Stephanie Bice is helping lead the effort.

Congresswoman Bice, a Republican, and Pennsylvania Democrat Chrissy Houlahan co-chair the House’s 6-person Paid Family Leave working group. Bice says, that considering the diversity of the members' backgrounds and personal opinions, agreeing on a framework truly is a big step, reflective of the significance of the issue they're addressing.

"The United States is one of only seven developed countries that doesn’t have some sort of paid family leave program," Bice (R-OK5) pointed out in an interview Thursday.

That dubious distinction got Bice and Houlahan, her former hallmate -- both working mothers -- motivated to change things.

In an interview last March, Houlahan acknowledged theirs is not the first attempt by members of Congress to pass a paid family leave law, but she said it may be the first bipartisan attempt. She said their goal wasn't necessarily to do everything all at once--"but at least to have more people having access to paid leave than currently do."

Bice, Houlahan, and their Paid Family Leave Working Group spent last year meeting with the various stakeholders and keeping in mind that 14 states (Oklahoma is not one of them) and the District of Columbia already have their own paid leave programs in place.

"And the challenges for employers, especially national employers, is that they’re having to adhere to all of these different mandates, depending on the state," Bice explained. "So, our goal is to try to put something together that can be a universal plan that companies can get behind."

The framework the group released this week has four pillars, beginning with the notion that this won't be a government-funded mandate, but a public-private partnership.

"That public-private partnership," said Bice, "really is allowing states to partner up with, for example, insurance companies to be able to work together and provide resources for a paid family leave option."

The second pillar aims to coordinate paid leave benefits across the states that opt-in, while the third specifically looks at incentivizing small businesses to offer paid leave by creating an insurance pool, and then, fourth, expanding already existing paid leave tax credits.

Bice estimates they are about 35 percent through the entire process and says now comes the truly hard part: writing the bill and getting feedback as they do.

"We’re actually getting into the real nuts and bolts of how we make this function," she said. "There will be a lot of back-and-forth these next few months once we start writing that text."