White House senior adviser Ivanka Trump defended her plan for nationally enforced paid family leave after the Wall Street Journal's editorial board said it did not oppose the idea in principle but that the government should not be in charge of implementing such a program.
In a column for The Wall Street Journal, Ivanka Trump wrote: "The reality is that in 63 percent of American homes with children, all parents work. Providing a national guaranteed paid-leave program — with a reasonable time limit and benefit cap — isn't an entitlement, it's an investment in America's working families."
She further explained that "government benefits should not be a substitute for private-sector investment. We see a national paid-leave benefit as the necessary floor from which private sector companies and state governments can build," stressing that "those who need these benefits the most aren't getting them . . .
"Currently, only 6 percent of workers in the bottom income quartile have access to paid family leave."
Trump added that "studies show that these individuals… are far more likely to lose or quit their jobs in the event of childbirth, resulting in a far greater cost to society over the long term."
President Donald Trump tweeted out his daughter's article.
Ivanka Trump has proposed six weeks of mandatory paid leave for mothers and fathers, a plan that has been problematic among conservatives but has won backing from some centrists, the Washington Examiner reported.
She has also suggested giving incentives to employers to have childcare at the workplace and rewriting the tax code so that working parents can deduct childcare expenses from their income taxes.
Trump wrote in The Journal that she would continue working with congressmen from both parties in an effort to design the policy.
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