Social Security Cares Act – another idea where ideology comes before logic

The good people at the Center for American Progress are great at coming up with ideas, mostly to address one perceived social ill or another. Their latest idea is to add a new benefit to Social Security. This time it’s paid leave for short-term illness, care of a newborn or care of an ill relative. Here is part of their logic for the proposal.

While the phenomenon of workers combining work with care is not new, one thing is now clear: This trend is not going to be reversed but rather will continue to accelerate. In fact, in 2010 half of all births to women under age 30 were to single mothers. If a single mom or one of the breadwinners in a two-earner family must stay at home to care for an ill child, then they may face loss of pay, loss of opportunity to advance in the workplace, or, in the worst cases, loss of a job. While these scenarios are most likely for those workers earning the lowest wages, no worker in the United States is fully protected against these possibilities.

CAP isn’t quite sure how to pay for this idea, but point to the payroll taxes as used by California and New Jersey where paid leave has been added to temporary disability benefits. The problem is only five states have temporary disability benefit laws.

Is this the time to even think about adding new payroll taxes to anyone? Given the state of Social Security and the Congressional record for messing about with it, do we really want to add another entitlement to the program? On the other hand, pragmatism never was a strength of progressives. It's a good thing these folks aren't in charge of anything that actually has to run successfully or affordably in the real world.

Call me old-fashioned (and proud of it), but rather than trying to fix everything we seem to screw up, why not spend some time asking how we got where we are that creates the need for society to pick up the pieces. Let me see if I have this right, the negative scenarios are most likely to occur among workers with the lowest income and among those workers where 50% of births are to single women (actually about 70% among African-American women) and the problem is these folks don't get paid as a result of these births?

There is a problem alright, it's called what happened to the stable traditional family in America and personal responsibility and moral values on the part of both men and women.