Edwards announces paid family leave plan

When it comes to helping parents take time off from work, Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards is raising the stakes.

The former North Carolina senator on Tuesday proposed spending $2 billion a year to help states create family leave programs that offer workers at least eight weeks of paid time off to care for a newborn or ill family member. The proposal is similar to those offered by his rivals, but Edwards would put up more money — New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's plan calls for $1 billion a year; Illinois Sen. Barack Obama proposes $1.5 billion.

Edwards also would set a national goal of eight weeks of paid leave for all by 2014.

"It's really important for parents for families to be able to take this leave, to be able to do it and not lose their income, which is a huge drain on millions of families in this country," he said at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon.

Like Clinton and Obama, Edwards also proposes expanding the federal Family and Medical Leave Act, co-authored by another Democratic presidential hopeful, Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd. Though Edwards wants to make 13 million more workers eligible for unpaid leave under the act, he noted that millions who are currently eligible don't participate because they can't afford to.

Edwards also would require all businesses to offer their workers a minimum of seven paid sick days a year. He said the range of proposals complement his other health and education initiatives.

"It works in combination with universal health care, universal preschool, and a whole series of things that are essentially aimed at making sure we strengthen and grow the middle class in this country, and provide some level of financial security that does not exist today," he said.

While Edwards is going further than his rivals on family leave, he wasn't willing to up the ante when a medical student in the audience asked him to commit to spending $300 million a year on a program that gives scholarships to medical students who agree to working in underserved areas. The student noted that Sen. Joe Biden has made the commitment, prompting Edwards to joke, "Welcome to my world."

"By the time I leave this meeting today, I will have committed to another $50 billion in spending," he said, before telling the student that while he wouldn't commit to a dollar amount, he strongly supports such programs and has proposed one of his own that would provide similar financial aid to both medical students and nursing students.

A spokesman for Dodd noted that as a senator, Edwards did not join Dodd in co-sponsoring legislation to expand the Family and Medical Leave Act.

"While we wish Mr. Edwards had signed on to Senator Dodd's efforts to expand FMLA while he was in the Senate, or for that matter, remained in the Senate to help Senator Dodd's efforts to pass a paid FMLA bill now, we welcome him to the issue," said Bryan DeAngelis.

Amber Wilkerson, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, called Edwards' plan "another costly promise that the Democrats won't be able to pay for without imposing a catastrophic tax hike on working families in New Hampshire and across America."

Later at a town hall meeting, Edwards added a new twist to his criticism of Clinton's vote in the Senate to declare Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization by reference a speech she gave in Iowa on Saturday.

"Senator Clinton unveiled her new campaign slogan, 'Turn up the heat on the Republicans.' For me it's not turning up the heat on the Republicans to vote with (President) Bush and (Vice President Dick) Cheney and the neo-cons on Iran," Edwards said. "I think if we want to stand up to them, you have to do it when it counts. You have to do it when the votes are taken.

Clinton has characterized her vote as a way to gain leverage for U.S. negotiations with Iran.

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