Written Statement of the Strengthen Social Security Coalition
1440 G Street NW, Washington DC 20005
U.S. Senate Committee on Finance
Subcommittee on Social Security, Pensions, & Family Policy
Hearing on Examining the Importance of Paid Family Leave for American Working Families
July 11, 2018
The Strengthen Social Security Coalition (SSSC) is a broad-based coalition of over 350 nationaland state organizations representing 50 million Americans, including seniors, workers, women,
people with disabilities, children, young adults, veterans, people of low income, people of color,
communities of faith, and others. We are united in our support of Social Security, a promise
made to Americans of all generations. We support expanding Social Security, including adding
paid family leave. We strongly oppose, however, ​proposals that advance paid family leave at theexpense of Social Security retirement benefits. It is unnecessary to do so.
The provision of paid family leave is long past due in the United States. All Americans shouldhave access to paid family leave, but paid family leave should not jeopardize anyone’s retirement
security. Americans are overwhelmingly supportive of paid family leave ​and​ Social Security.
The nation is wealthy enough both to provide paid family leave to all working families and toincrease Social Security’s vital, but modest, retirement, disability, and survivor benefits.
Social Security was created in 1935 to replace wages lost as a result of old age, so that
Americans would have guaranteed income in retirement. In the decades following, Social
Security was expanded to protect workers from other events that lead to loss of wages –long-term disability and the death of a family breadwinner. It is a universal social insurance
program – nearly all workers pay in, and in return they are eligible for benefits when theyexperience one of the insured events – old age, disability, or death leaving dependents.
While Social Security successfully covers long-term income losses, our nation, unlike manyother countries, lacks a paid family and medical leave system for when workers take time out of
the workforce for short-term reasons like having a child, caring for a loved one, or receiving
medical treatment. It’s long past time for us to join the rest of the world in providing paid family
and medical leave.
Proposals, like the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) plan, are harmful to American families.
The IWF proposal would allow new parents to take up to twelve weeks of leave with partial

wage replacement – but only in return for delaying their Social Security benefits when it comestime to retire. This “deal” is simply a Social Security benefit cut. Our country is facing a looming
retirement crisis caused by the decline of traditional pensions, the inadequacy of 401(k)s,
decades of rising inequality and stagnating wages. The last thing American families need is to beforced to cut their future benefits to pay for pressing immediate financial needs like those that
occur at the birth of a child. Nor is there any reason to force them to make that choice: we are thewealthiest country in the history of the world. Protecting and expanding Social Security’sretirement, disability, and survivor benefits, while also providing working families with paid
family and medical leave is a matter of political will and values, not affordability.
While the IWF proposal is supposed to help women, in reality​ ​women would be most hurt.
Women’s retirement security would take the biggest hit from this plan because women provide
the substantial majority of caregiving, and so, would disproportionately see their own Social
Security benefits reduced under this proposal.
Moreover, women disproportionately rely on Social Security. As a result of longer life
expectancies, on average, lower-paying jobs, often without access to supplementary retirement
plans, and more time out of the workforce caring for family members, women’s average monthly
Social Security benefits are already 20 percent lower than men’s. We should be crediting timeout of the workforce caring for family members towards the calculation of Social Security, notforcing women to reduce their earned Social Security benefits even further for the invaluable, butmonetarily uncompensated work of caregiving.
In addition to forcing new parents who need leave to cut their own future retirement benefits, theIWF plan is also very narrowly targeted to only cover parental leave. It does nothing for those
who need medical leave either for themselves or to care for a loved one.
American families can and should have paid family leave and a secure retirement. Every memberof Congress should reject the IWF plan and any other plan that tries to disguise a Social Security
benefit cut behind the promise of other worthwhile goals. Our coalition, and the American
people, will not stand idle as leaders try to dismantle our effective Social Security system in thename of paid parental leave. Rather, we urge Congress to develop a paid family leave system inaddition to, not instead of, adequate Social Security benefits.
We look forward to your support in this matter and extend our assistance to create paid familyleave while also expanding economic security in the form of increased Social Security benefits
for retirees, people with disabilities, children who have lost parents, and others.