House Committee, Subcommittee Act on Paid Parental Leave Bill

On April 16, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee approved, 27-10, the Federal Employees Paid Parental Leave Act (H.R. 5781). The Federal Workforce, Postal Service, and the District of Columbia Subcommittee approved, 7-3, the measure on April 15. The subcommittee held a hearing on an earlier version of the paid parental leave bill (H.R. 3799) on March 6 (see The Source, 3/7/08).                           

Sponsored by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), the measure would provide federal employees with four weeks’ full pay and benefits for leave taken for the birth or adoption of a child. Employees also could use up to eight additional weeks of accrued sick leave for a total of 12 weeks of paid leave. The bill would require the GAO to conduct and submit to Congress, within 12 months of the bill’s enactment, a study on “the feasibility and desirability of providing an insurance benefit to federal employees [that] affords partial or total wage replacement with respect to periods of qualified leave.”

During consideration of the bill, the full committee rejected:

• an amendment by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) that would have expressed a sense of the Congress that no additional funding should go toward paid parental leave for federal employees, 11-17; and

• an amendment by Rep. Issa that would have eliminated the section of the bill that would give federal employees four paid weeks of parental leave in the event of a birth or adoption, 10-20. 

During its mark-up of H.R. 5781, the subcommittee adopted, by voice vote, an amendment by full committee Chair Henry Waxman (D-CA) that would reduce the amount for paid parental leave available to federal employees under the legislation from eight weeks to four weeks.