Sponsors (39)
Introduced September 16, 2025 by Kirsten Gillibrand · Last progress September 16, 2025
The bill creates a nationwide, federally administered paid family and medical leave program that expands paid caregiving access, income replacement, and transparency while preserving state programs — but it increases federal and state administrative costs, raises privacy and complexity risks, and leaves gaps for some very low‑income or irregular workers.
Parents and family caregivers gain a federal paid family and medical leave benefit allowing paid caregiving time (up to 12× their workweek hours per benefit period), increasing access to paid leave for those caring for sick family members or new children.
Low- and middle-income workers receive income replacement while on leave (higher replacement rates for lower earners, a monthly cap up to $4,000, and indexing to wage growth), which helps cover lost earnings during caregiving periods.
A dedicated SSA Office will administer claims and payments, with targeted outreach (including culturally and linguistically tailored information), improving awareness, access, and timely payments for eligible workers.
All taxpayers will face substantial new federal spending to create and run a federal paid-leave program (staffing an SSA office) and to subsidize State programs, increasing budgetary costs or appropriations needs.
Expanded data-sharing and state reporting (including individual-level names, IDs, and benefit amounts) raise significant privacy and confidentiality risks for beneficiaries if safeguards are insufficient.
Eligibility rules and timing tests (earnings floor, lookback windows, caps tied to prior-month hours, and treating months with under four caregiving hours as zero) may exclude the lowest-income, recent, or irregular-hour workers from benefits when they need them most.
Based on analysis of 7 sections of legislative text.
Establishes a federal paid family and medical leave insurance program administered by SSA with eligibility rules, a tiered benefit formula, and state grant payments for legacy programs.
Creates a federal Family and Medical Leave Insurance (FMLI) program run by the Social Security Administration to pay partial wage replacement to eligible workers who take time off for family or medical reasons. It defines who qualifies, how benefits are calculated and paid each month, sets up an SSA Office of Paid Family and Medical Leave to run the program, authorizes annual payments to certain existing state paid-leave programs, and requires reporting, data sharing, and rulemaking to implement the system. The law lays out eligibility windows and earnings tests, a tiered benefit formula (higher replacement for lower earners), limits on caregiving hours, state grant rules for so-called legacy State programs, an advisory body to help write regulations, and recurring government audits of program processing and access.