For immediate release: December 2, 2021
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Walorski Pushes Plan to Provide Americans with Paid Family Leave and Affordable Child Care

“People want better ways to work. They want paid time off and more flexible schedules. What they don't want are more government mandates.”

WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Rep. Jackie Walorski (IN-2) appeared Tuesday evening before a dinner meeting of The Ripon Society, delivering remarks in which she talked not only about inflation and how rising prices are pinching people in their pocketbooks, but a plan she is pushing that would provide working Americans with some relief.

“I think probably four months ago, people were hoping that this President and his administration were going to do something good for them,” the Indiana lawmaker began. “Unfortunately, gas prices have more than doubled in my district. Propane's gone up 50%. Senior citizens living on fixed incomes are having to decide how they are going to pay for groceries and put gas in their car. The disaster that Biden has created is I think the toughest I've ever seen.”

Walorski was first elected in 2012 and is a member of the Ways & Means Committee. She is also a member of the Suburban Caucus, where she is helping to lead the effort to craft solutions to some of the most pressing challenges facing working Americans – challenges, she said, she remembers her own parents facing when she was growing up.

“My Dad was a fireman,” she recalled, “He also owned a small business. And the thing that put him out of business -- and the thing that I look at as the big enemy -- was government over-regulation. And when you look at small businesses right now in this country, they're the first ones folding. But I would tell you that alongside Kevin Brady, we have really laid the groundwork for some phenomenal solutions, including paid time off and childcare and the kinds of things that affect not only the Suburban Caucus, but Democrat, Republican, and independent families.”

Walorski was referring to legislation that she and the Ranking Member of the Ways & Means Committee introduced earlier this year. Called the Protecting Worker Paychecks and Family Choice Act, the measure would provide working Americans with increased access to paid family and medical leave and affordable child care. Specifically, the bill would:

Expand the employer-provided paid family and medical leave tax credit and create new family savings accounts.
Incentivize and reduce costs for small employers to offer paid family leave to their employees by providing more generous tax credits and paving the way for pooling and cost sharing.
Target policies to low-wage workers, who are least likely to receive paid leave through their employers.
Improve flexibility for families using dependent care flexible spending accounts.
Improve the employer-provided child care tax credit to provide flexibility for workers and more generous credits for small employers.
Increase parent choice to best fit their child’s needs, prevent the child care “cliff” for low-income parents, and better target existing funds to states with higher concentrations of children in poverty.
Provide states with new options to increase supply of care and more time to use $50 billion in new funding provided since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic that hasn’t yet made it to local communities and families.
Create a bipartisan commission to make recommendations to Congress on streamlining and reducing duplication in financing of federal early care and education programs.

“People want better ways to work,” Walorski stated. “They want paid time off and more flexible schedules. What they don't want are more government mandates.”

The Ripon Society is a public policy organization that was founded in 1962 and takes its name from the town where the Republican Party was born in 1854 – Ripon, Wisconsin. One of the main goals of The Ripon Society is to promote the ideas and principles that have made America great and contributed to the GOP’s success. These ideas include keeping our nation secure, keeping taxes low and having a federal government that is smaller, smarter and more accountable to the people.

For more information on The Ripon Society, please visit www.riponsociety.org.

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