D2 · Pillar D · Human Flourishing & Societal Infrastructure
Maternal, infant, and family-leave continuity
Federal paid family and medical leave of 12 weeks at 80 percent of wages up to a cap, administered through state partnerships. Universal home-visiting for new parents in the first year. A maternal-mortality initiative covering perinatal care standards, Medicaid midwife and doula reimbursement, and standardized obstetric emergency protocols. An infant-mortality reduction fund on the Healthy Start model at four times current scale. Complements C4 upstream; C4 scoring is unchanged.
- 10-year fiscal
- +$210B netInvestment
- Implementation
- Years 2–5
- Middle class
- Strongly positive
- Planetary
- Neutral
Gross ~$280B; offsets ~$70B · Medium-High confidence
$8,000–$14,000 per birth or serious family-medical event. No new levy on households in the hold-harmless band.
No material climate effect.
Global precedent
Sweden’s Föräldrapenning (480 days of shareable parental leave); Germany’s Elterngeld; Norway’s paid-leave model. The United States is the only OECD country without national paid parental leave.
Lead mechanism
HHS; Department of Labor; Senate HELP; House Education and Workforce.
Bipartisan framing
Conservative case
Labor-force attachment, parental choice, and family formation — with recent proposals from Sen. Rubio and a White House family-leave effort.
Progressive case
Universal paid leave and a maternal-health standard that closes a documented racial mortality gap.
Bipartisan leave proposals from Rubio, Gillibrand, and the prior Trump administration’s family-policy office.
Figures in this framework are illustrative directional estimates derived from publicly available data and conventional Congressional Budget Office budget-window logic. They are not official CBO scores. Any provision adopted from this framework would require formal CBO scoring before legislative consideration. This document is a policy white paper, not an introduced bill.