Ivanka Trump, the eldest daughter of President Donald Trump, touted the administration’s recent success in securing a new federal employee paid leave policy during an interview on Sunday and discussed the path forward for Americans who work in the private sector.
Trump made the remarks during an interview on CBS News’ “Face The Nation” with host Margaret Brennan, who noted that Trump “worked to get Republicans on board with what just ended up in the [National Defense Authorization Act] NDAA, which is to guarantee government workers 12 weeks of paid leave.”
“This has been years of discussion and education on the merits of paid family leave grounded in conservative values of work and of family,” Trump said. “And the reality is, the world has changed and it’s changed quickly. Today, women make up 47 percent of the workforce. Yet we provide the vast majority of unpaid care for children and, of course, adult dependents.”
“And it is not acceptable that in America today, one in four women go back to work two weeks after having a child. It’s just not acceptable,” Trump continued. “We can’t tell the private sector to step up and to offer these critical benefits to their employees and not be willing to do it ourselves”
“So you not only have this and this is huge, it’s a huge step forward in providing paid leave to all Americans, which is our ultimate objective,” Trump added. “But we also, as part of tax reform, approved the first ever tax credit to employers offering leave to their employees making under seventy two thousand dollars a year, which are the people that are very, very unlikely to receive it. So incentivizing employers to step forward.”
With the passage of the NDAA, @IvankaTrump says getting Republicans on board with guaranteeing government workers 12 weeks of paid leave was the result of "years of discussion and education." https://t.co/qi4U2grhkY pic.twitter.com/0zuRRYLRdg
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) December 29, 2019
Trump said that when she arrived in Washington, D.C., a few years ago that she was surprised at how few Democrats tried to work with Republicans on the issue and said that she had to essentially start from scratch to get this done.
“So Republicans didn’t want a payroll tax increase that disproportionately impacts the most vulnerable,” Trump said. “So what are new solutions? We proposed the first ever bipartisan, bicameral plan that would allow people the flexibility to determine if they want to pull back- pull forward their child tax credit and then pay it back over 10 years. And by the way, paying it back over 10 years, they’d still receive an annual distribution that is dramatically higher than what they received prior to us passing tax reform.”
Trump noted that the biggest change that she has seen on the issue is the fact that both sides are no longer debating whether paid family leave is a good policy, they are debating on what is the best version of that policy.
“Oh, our goal is to ensure that paid leave is available to all Americans,” Trump continued. “But we’re putting forth new solutions. A payroll tax increase is not going to be passed into law anytime in the near future. So what are the other options? That’s why the Cassidy-Sinema bill is so interesting. It’s bipartisan co-sponsors in the House, in the Senate, and it provides people with flexibility. It is not a mandate on- on business. Oftentimes, small business cannot afford the mandate. So it creates flexibility and discretion for the benefit of the person who ultimately wants to use it.”
.@IvankaTrump on why the issue of family leave had not been solved by previous administrations: "The debate had grown stale. If we want to deliver relief to working parents who need this, we need to come up with new, fresh solutions." https://t.co/fqFD9KK4cS pic.twitter.com/UH2GObpvbh
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) December 29, 2019
“How do you get a private business?” Brennan asked. You were in the private sector. You didn’t have a policy yourself in the beginning, but now you support it. How do you- do you ask everyone on your in your own business?”
“After I had employees, I did,” Trump responded. “So I think the fourth person I hired was pregnant when I hired her. So we put a policy in place for her. So everyone who’s ever had a baby at one of my companies has had access to leave.”
“So that, you know, that’s something I recognized as critically important,” Trump continued. “But I do think elevating awareness around the benefits to attracting and retaining the best talent this country has to offer. It is in companies self-interest to do this. And that’s why we’ve seen employers increasingly adopt paid leave.”
“I had a conversation with Doug McMillan, the CEO of Walmart, about how important this policy was in the first year of the administration,” Trump concluded. “Walmart adopted and expand upon their- their parental leave policies following tax reform. I got a call from- from Doug right after they announced the policy change and he said, you know, it was the most popular thing we did, even more than raising our wage, offering that benefit.”