The Covid-19 pandemic brought into focus how caregiving needs can hinder employees’ ability to perform their jobs effectively, and provider shortages, coupled with rising costs, have continued to hinder workforce participation in recent years. Absent meaningful federal legislation to better support these workers, more HR leaders in the private sector are stepping up by expanding their paid leave policies and subsidizing care.
The Kamala Harris and Donald Trump campaigns offer differing visions of what enhanced support for employees with caregiving duties could look like. If a Harris-Walz White House is successful at carrying out its promises to implement a paid family leave program and make childcare more affordable, more HR leaders could be prompted to offer paid leave in compliance with a federal mandate, rather than overlapping state statutes. They might also be prompted to offer childcare as an employee benefit if the administration finds ways to incentivize businesses to do so.
It is a bit less clear if a Trump-Vance administration would direct federal efforts to address the rising costs of childcare and employees’ need for time off to care for loved ones. While in office, the former president pledged to expand access to paid family leave and childcare, though with weeks until election day, it remains unclear how he and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance , might tackle such policies this time around.
Harris to continue Biden’s plans for paid family leave, childcare. President Biden ran on a platform that included plans for a federal paid family and medical leave program, and has continued to push for one throughout his presidency.
Bipartisan efforts in Congress to revamp the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which is unpaid, have thus far been unsuccessful, leaving workers to rely on employer benefits and a patchwork of state laws. Enhanced funding for childcare providers also expired in 2023, and provisions to expand access to childcare didn’t make it into the final version of the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s signature healthcare, tax, and climate bill.
Shortly after she announced her candidacy, Harris pledged to revitalize these plans, telling staff and supporters, “We believe in a future where no child has to grow up in poverty…where every person has access to paid family leave and affordable childcare.”
It’s not yet clear how Harris’s efforts to implement these policies would differ from her current boss’s, though the VP recently said she wants to limit the amount working families pay for childcare to 7% of their income. Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, has said he believes paid family and medical leave is the first thing the Democratic party should tackle if they control Congress next year.
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Should a federal paid leave policy get signed into law, its effect on HR would depend in part on how it’s funded (i.e. through tax incentives, or having employees pay into the system), Ashley Brightwell, a partner in the labor and employment practice of Atlanta-based law firm Alston + Bird, previously told HR Brew. Any federal paid leave policy would impact businesses of all sizes, she said, “because you’re going to have to make sure that even if you do have some paid benefits, you know that it is compliant with what the federal law mandates.”
As for childcare, a look into how programs are playing out at the state level may offer some clues as to how enhanced funding might impact HR leaders’ work. In states like Florida, Iowa, and Michigan, employers can receive tax breaks for offering childcare to their employees, or share costs with the government. Brian Gutman, director of government relations for childcare company the Learning Care Group, told HR Brew this spring his organization is pushing for similar incentives at the federal level.
Trump: “Childcare is childcare.” The former president, on the other hand, hasn’t yet focused on the care economy as a prominent issue on the campaign trail.
During his first term in the White House, Trump, along with his daughter Ivanka, convened a group of lawmakers to address the effect of rising childcare costs on families. Their efforts, however, did not yield any policy changes. Trump did include an expansion of the child tax credit in the signature Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, though that provision is set to expire next year.
The former president dodged questions on the topic during his first debate. Asked more directly at The Economic Club of New York this month, he said, “Well, I would do that,” before moving on to remind the audience of his daughter’s unsuccessful efforts during his first term.
Trump then went on to minimize the costs of childcare compared to the economic impacts of raising tariffs on importing foreign goods.
His running mate told Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk this month that working parents should try and rely more on the caregiving of family members, such as “grandma and grandpa.” In situations in which employees do not have familial options, he pointed to loosening state-directed certification requirements to bolster the availability of childcare workers.
HR teams preparing for a Trump administration might not need to plan for any substantive changes to their caregiver benefits, and can direct their attention to other issues.