On this week’s episode, Rachel Greszler joins to discuss what President Biden’s Infrastructure Plan and American Families Plan mean for women and children. We specifically focus on whether funneling hundreds of billions of dollars to things like childcare and paid family leave help or harm American families.

Rachel is a Research Fellow in Economic, Budget and Entitlements in the Institute for Economic Freedom and Opportunity at the Heritage Foundation, where she focuses on retirement and labor policies such as Social Security, disability insurance, pensions, and worker compensation. Rachel also provides research and commentary on workplace issues, including federal employee compensation; women’s issues; and labor policies such as the minimum wage and paid family leave. Before joining Heritage in 2013, Greszler was a senior economist on the staff of the Joint Economic Committee of the Congress for seven years. She completed her graduate studies at Georgetown University, where she earned master’s degrees in both economics and public policy.


TRANSCRIPT

Beverly Hallberg:

And welcome to She Thinks, a podcast where you’re allowed to think for yourself. I’m your host, Beverly Hallberg and on today’s episode, we discuss what President Biden’s infrastructure plan and American Families Plan mean for women and children. Will funneling hundreds of billions of dollars to things such as childcare and paid family leave help or harm American families? Well joining us to discuss this is Rachel Greszler, Rachel Greszler is a research fellow in economic budget and entitlements in the Institute for Economic Freedom and Opportunity at the Heritage Foundation. She focuses on retirement and labor policies, such as Social Security, disability insurance, pensions and worker compensation. She also provides research and commentary on workplace issues, including federal employee compensation, women’s issues and labor policies such as the minimum wage and paid family leave. Before joining Heritage in 2013, Rachel was a senior economist on the staff of the Joint Economic Committee of the Congress for seven years. Rachel, thank you so much for joining us on She Thinks today.

Rachel Greszler:

My pleasure. Thank you for having me, Beverly.

Beverly Hallberg:

I think you’re a perfect person to talk about childcare and what so many of these policies that Biden has proposed means for women because you are a mom of six so I feel like you have a lot of experience being a full-time employee and also being a mom. I kind of want to just start by saying, can you share with other moms out there, some of the tips that you have about working a full-time job and raising six kids? How have you seemingly done it all?

Rachel Greszler:

Yeah, well, I guess I would say is that I don’t think the message should be that you can do it all, but that you can do what you decide you want to do and there is no one-size-fits-all solution for everyone. And even for myself, it’s changed over time, what I’ve wanted to do, what I’ve been able to do. And so just going with what you want at that time and also, the freedom to pursue what you want.

I actually think that COVID-19 had a great silver lining for women in just creating these more flexible workspaces and kind of breaking down some of the barriers that I know I at least especially felt when I first became a mom and just the fear of, oh, I don’t want to bring family life into work. And now, I think some of those walls have broken down and we saw the 2017 BBC video that went viral when some kids walked in on their father’s interview and yet that’s commonplace today. And so I think that’s great and I embrace that and I hope that it will help more women to be able to pursue both work and family life in a way that works best for them.

Beverly Hallberg:

I agree. I think the working from home model benefits women, especially mothers, but there has been that negative side to COVID, and many negatives, but the negative side for women, I believe the statistic is that two million women have had to leave the workforce due to needing to raise their kids and be part of their education. Has there also been that side of things that has made it very hard for women during COVID?

Rachel Greszler:

Yes, absolutely. And especially at the beginning of COVID, women were kind of disproportionately impacted in two ways. First was that they were more heavily concentrated in the sectors of the economy that lost the most jobs so they were more likely to lose their jobs. And they were also more likely to be the ones who needed to stay home when schools and childcares were closed. At the beginning, women actually their employment fell by 1.2 million more than men’s did. But the story that we haven’t heard in the media yet is that that has actually reversed now. It’s fully recovered.

Women have actually lost fewer jobs than men today. Their unemployment rate is lower. And another thing is they’ve actually had twice the income gains of men, their incomes have risen 5.3% compared to men’s 2.2% since the start of the recession. Absolutely, at the beginning there were these disproportionate impacts, but I think that we saw over time is government restrictions were eased, as schools were able to reopen is more workplace accommodations were adapted so that people could work remotely, women have shown that they’re able to adapt to that and they’re actually doing quite well now.

Beverly Hallberg:

And President Biden has come out with some policies, the infrastructure plan and also the American Families Plan to try to help women when they need childcare and thinking about paid family leave and something that you said earlier really struck me. It struck me, it was there isn’t this one size fits all for being a mother and being a full-time employee somewhere, even a part-time employee, it’s kind of figuring it out. Do you think the policies that are coming out do fit into that one size fits all model? And does that present a lot of problems with women who have a variety of different choices they make on how they raise their kids and also plan to work?

Rachel Greszler:

Yes. I think that the policies that have been proposed have this one vision of what the American family looks like and it’s largely rooted in decades ago and the types of jobs that most people performed back then and it doesn’t take into account the diversity across the U.S., including the difference between cities and suburbs and more rural areas. And it’s really just submitting, here we’ll give you childcare, but it’s going to be this one type that you get from the government and the only places you can go are large childcare centers that are going to subscribe to government directed curriculums, including inclusion standards and these very expensive regulatory barriers that are just going to make kind of a two-class system of childcare in the U.S. And those types of subsidies, I don’t think will even be possible in more rural areas where you do see a lot of childcare shortages.

And on the paid family leave, I think what most people want is a flexible and accommodating policy. Something that they can access quickly. The reality is only one out of five leaves that Americans take is for the new birth of a child. Oftentimes it’s for their own medical leave or a family member and it might be an emergency. And just thinking through will a government program actually help the people that we’re trying to reach? And I think it won’t. Not only will it be inaccessible for their short-term needs, but we’ve seen, both in the U.S. and in other countries that low income individuals don’t actually get to use these programs. They pay the taxes into them and they hardly ever are able to benefit from them. The CBO agreed with that as well. And so I think that it’s kind of misguided here to be saying, “Politicians know what’s best for you. And we’re going to sit at the helm of families,” when most families just want ample opportunities to earn a good living and to be able to keep as much of their income as possible to spend on what they want.

And I love what Senator Scott very eloquently said. He said, “The beauty of the American dream is that families get to define it for themselves.” And families don’t want the government taking more of their income so that the politicians can create and control some of the most important components of their lives. But when you look at what’s being proposed, that’s what it is.

Beverly Hallberg:

And if what’s being proposed, isn’t the answer, what is? The reality is there are childcare issues. We also know, especially when you think of single moms out there, they’re really struggling to provide for their families. Is there a silver bullet? Are there policies that really can fix all the problems we see?

Rachel Greszler:

Yeah, there’s no silver bullet. Childcare is a tough issue because it is expensive. You’re paying somebody else to watch your children. And therefore that means you need to earn more than them to be able to pay them after paying your taxes and everything else. But there are definitely policies out there that could help. We are already spending federal and state dollars on childcare subsidies, on Head Start programs. Head Start has been largely proven to be ineffective and it doesn’t really deliver childcare, it provides a few hours today per day, which doesn’t help a single mom who needs to also work. And so things like making Head Start dollars portable so that families can use them if their provider of their choice.

At the state level, there is so much room for reducing the number of regulations on childcare providers. My childcare center has talked about they have to replace things because they’re not allowed to use duct tape because that’s against the regulations. The space requirements, the teacher-to-staff ratios and all of these things that make it so burdensome to first become licensed and then to maintain that center, it makes it so that it’s really hard for a mom who wants to enter, open a childcare in her home to have that center for religious organizations. And we’ve seen the number of small in-home childcare providers fall by half, over 15 years. And I think that’s a lot of the reason that we have both the shortage and also the higher cost because in home providers are about 20 to 30% less expensive than the larger daycare centers, but they’re the ones that are disappearing because of these burdensome regulations.

Beverly Hallberg:

And what specifically are some of those burdensome regulations? What do individuals face who want to open this type of daycare?

Rachel Greszler:

If you want to have a childcare in your home, you basically have to convert a space of your home to a childcare center. That involves everything from the fire safety standards, you might have to insert a new system, you might have to have a sprinkler system installed. The types of cribs that you’re allowed to use, how much space has to be between everything. You have to have a certain number of square feet per children and then even down to the types of beverages that you must offer them, at what intervals you’re allowed to offer them, the types of labels that have to be placed on things, what type of plastic can and can’t be used, the number of toys that must be offered to different ages of children, which toys cannot be offered. It’s just very prescriptive and makes it extremely difficult for individuals to be able to convert their home to a childcare. And this isn’t just somebody who’s going to full-time provide childcare.

If I wanted a friend of mine to watch my kids two days a week after school and they’re going to watch them for more than 20 hours per month, then they have to become a licensed childcare provider just to do that. There needs to be more room for there to be flexible childcare options out there, including things like co-ops where parents can pool together. That was something that probably came up a lot during the pandemic, but there are limits on that as well, such as not being able to exchange money. You can’t pay somebody else in those circumstances. It’s just very prescriptive when really I think parents just want to be able to make the choices that they know are best for them and the situations that they feel are safe.

Beverly Hallberg:

Yeah. Because it is the parent angle, but it’s also that other angle you were talking about, which is the independent contractor and those who are self-employed. Do you find that some of the proposals that we’re seeing from the Biden administration and also on the state level are really impacting independent contractors?

Rachel Greszler:

Absolutely. We’ve seen in California where they’ve implemented something called AB5, it really attempts to drive out opportunities for independent contractors. That tens of thousands of people have lost the opportunity to earn a living. This isn’t just Uber drivers and gig workers, this is anybody who wants to be their own boss and work for themselves. And we’ve seen from the Biden administration that not only do they want to implement AB5, but it’s AB5 kind of on steroids because there are no exemptions. California has a 100 exemptions, AB5 would have none. And so it just drives out these opportunities that are available increasingly beneficial for women, especially mothers who would like to engage in the workforce on some level, but they don’t want to commit to a 9:00 to 5:00 job because that doesn’t necessarily work for them. But if they can do something that allows them to work flexibly on their own time, they’re able to do that. And the same thing for individuals with health conditions, disabilities, family obligations.

46% of the people who are independent workers say that they could not work for a traditional employer and that’s why they do this independent work. But those are exactly the types of jobs that the Biden administration wants to drive out through the PRO Act, through specifications in the infrastructure bill, in the Families bill. They’re just this pro union agenda that actually is trying to eliminate those independent work opportunities because it’s not easy to unionize those workers.

Beverly Hallberg:

And can you address just a little bit, why unions are so closely tied to what certain politicians do? How does that, I guess the element of political favors play a role? And how do you think it is playing a role? Not just in the areas we discussed, but also what we’ve seen when it comes to teachers unions and schools reopening.

Rachel Greszler:

Absolutely. The purpose of unions historically in the U.S. has been to represent workers and to fight for things like workplace safety and fair wages and compensation. And they absolutely played a critical role in that historically. But now that the free market and the U.S. labor laws have provided the things that unions used to, they no longer have a role and they fail to adapt to provide something that workers actually want. And so we’ve seen their membership decline drastically so that only 6% of private sector workers are unionized today. And as a result of that, the unions aren’t trying to attract more workers, they’re instead of trying to attract politicians who will vote for whatever legislation they want that will give them more power and control and that will force workers into unions instead of giving them the choice.

And so we see these threats from union bosses against lawmakers saying, “If you don’t vote for this piece of legislation that will force workers into a union against their will, don’t ask us for a dollar or a door knock. We won’t be coming.” And that just shows how strong of an influence they have because they control so much money and their endorsements mean so much to the success of political candidates. And I think families kind of saw this through COVID-19 when private schools reopened, daycares reopened quickly and we saw that they were safe places for kids to be and there was not the spread of COVID-19 that people feared. And yet the schools refused to open and it was the teachers’ unions that were refusing to go back. And that really harmed children, and I think we’re going to see the consequences for decades now to play out.

Beverly Hallberg:

Well, before we continue the conversation, I’d like to take a moment to highlight IWS Champion Women Profile series, which focuses on women across the country and world that are accomplishing amazing things. The media too often ignores their stories, but we don’t. We celebrate them and bring their stories directly to you. Our current profile is Pat Soldano, president of Family Enterprise USA. To check out her story, do go to iwf.org to see why she’s this week’s champion woman.

And Rachel, I want to pick up on something you said. You were talking about the unions, wages often come up when it comes to unions, say that they’re trying to help union workers get paid better, but of course there is this huge push by many Democrats on Capitol hill to push for this increase of the $15 minimum wage. So far it hasn’t gone anywhere, but what would be some of the potential impacts of raising the minimum wage? Because to many people on the surface it sounds great. Low income workers will make more, help provide for their families, but we often hear Republicans say it’s not a good idea. What is your take on it?

Rachel Greszler:

Yeah. We all want people to have opportunities to have higher incomes and rising over time but the reality is is you can’t legislate a higher minimum wage. The way that people earn more income is to be able to produce more things of value and that comes from gaining education and experience and also being paired with technology. When policymakers instead to create artificially high wages, what they actually do is things like destroy millions of jobs, drive up the prices of goods and services and cut off opportunities for millions of workers to get their foot in the door and to gain experience. Most people don’t earn a minimum wage for a lifetime. Actually almost nobody does. A lot of people start out at that, but the overwhelming majority of them will have a pay increase within one year and that’s because they’ve become more productive. But if you don’t ever have the opportunity to get that experience to move up the income ladder, we’re talking about tens of millions of Americans that just would potentially have no place in the labor market under a $15 per hour minimum wage.

And then thinking through, how much are we going to pay for things like food, for gas, for childcare? I actually did a study looking at the impact of a $15 per hour minimum wage on childcare and I think it’s something that we can all agree, we want childcare workers to be receiving high wages, but it doesn’t actually work out. The impact of that would be to increase childcare costs by 21% across the United States. We’re talking about $3,700 more per year for a family who has two children if the minimum wage rises to $15 per hour. And this is also a situation that exposes how one size fits all, doesn’t actually work in the United States because in Mississippi, $15 per hour is like having a $36 per hour minimum wage in DC where lawmakers are talking about passing this. It would devastate certain areas of the United States and really just have widespread impact that I don’t think people have thought about.

Beverly Hallberg:

And playing devil’s advocate just a little bit, what would you say to individuals that say, “I understand what you’re saying, but the reality is there are single mothers who are on a minimum wage paying job, trying to provide for their kids. How do we help them?” If raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour isn’t the answer because of all the consequences of that, how do we help people in that situation?

Rachel Greszler:

Absolutely. And I do want to just start out by saying that the statistics actually show .1% of workers are single mothers earning the minimum wage. This is a tiny percentage that are out there, but nevertheless, we absolutely want to help those single mothers who are out there. And that’s things like, if you’re a single mother, you’re not in a situation where you can go back and get a four-year college degree to get a higher income over time. But you might be able to participate in an apprenticeship program where not only are you going to be learning, but you’re going to be getting paid during that period of time. And it was great to see that there were some expansions in recognized apprenticeship programs in the previous administration, but those have actually been pared back under the Biden administration. Taken away these alternative opportunities where people don’t have to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of dollars to get something to earn a higher living.

And there’s also at the state level so much to be gained by getting rid of excessive occupational licensing laws that prevent people from using skills they already have to earn a living but instead saying things like, “If you want to braid hair or if you want to arrange flowers, you need to go out and get a year or two’s worth of education and you need to pay these steep fees to the licensing boards.” There’s just no reason to be driving out opportunities for people to earn incomes like that.

Beverly Hallberg:

And final question for you, you are steeped in the numbers, the economics behind things. I want to just talk broadly about our national debt and how much money has been spent, especially during COVID both last year and this year. When you look at the size of our debt, I know you have also, your research area focuses on entitlements, thinking of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. We’ve always said that those are going to bankrupt the country if we don’t reform them. Now we add COVID on top of this. How concerned are you about our increasing debt?

Rachel Greszler:

I think it is the greatest threat that we face right now. I think that we could potentially be trading the pandemic for a financial crisis, and I worry a lot about what the level of debt that we’re putting on our children, but even more so that, it’ll be a problem before my children would be working and paying taxes to pay that situation. Because the reality with financial crises is, you can look back and say, “Oh, we saw that coming over time.” But things keep going along until all of a sudden it’s not okay anymore and literally overnight you’re in a crisis situation and you can’t take reasonable, slow, measured reforms. Suddenly it’s just drastic changes, drastically higher taxes, drastic cuts in services and benefits.

And we don’t know what the tipping point is, but the fact that even since January, the $1.9 trillion COVID bill plus the two infrastructure packages that have been proposed, that’s almost $60,000 in new debt for each household in America that’s been proposed over a number of months. On top of nearly $300,000 worth of debt per household that’s out there. This is not sustainable. And I just worry that if we don’t do something soon, it will be too late to take measured responses.

Beverly Hallberg:

I think a lot of people are worried that if we don’t do something, it may be too late. That’s why we’re thankful that people like you are on top of it. Rachel Greszler with The Heritage Foundation, thank you so much for joining She Thinks today.

Rachel Greszler:

Thank you, Beverly.

Beverly Hallberg:

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