Senator Ernst Has Falsely Claimed Credit for “Significant” Paid Family Leave After Voting Against It – Will She Now Call on Trump to Enforce the Measure as the Relief Package Intended?

A new report by the New York Times details how the Trump Administration has significantly scaled back paid family leave so much that now 75% of workers could be exempt from benefits – including “health care providers and first responders.” This, of course, leaves the third-most unpopular senator in the country, Senator Joni Ernst, in a precarious position after spending the last week fudging the truth to Iowans.

After Congress passed 12 weeks of paid leave for workers impacted by the growing pandemic, Senator Ernst launched a victory tour falsely claiming credit for the measure – while conveniently concealing the fact that she voted to remove it from the relief package. But now, the Trump Administration’s undoing of worker protections has forced Senator Ernst to call her own bluff:

After calling paid family leave “significant” for Iowa workers despite voting against it, will Senator Ernst now demand the Trump Administration enforce the measure as the relief package intended?

New York Times: Trump Administration Scales Back Paid Leave in Coronavirus Relief Law

By: Emily Cochrane, Claire Cain Miller and Jim Tankersley

April 2, 2020

Key points:

  • The Trump administration has substantially scaled back paid leave requirements for employers that were created by a new coronavirus relief law, effectively exempting many small businesses in a move that infuriated lawmakers who had fought to expand the benefit.
  • In guidance issued on Wednesday, the Labor Department said that employers at companies with fewer than 50 workers had broad latitude to decline to offer the 12 weeks of paid leave that the law required for workers whose children were home from school or for child care because of the coronavirus pandemic.
  • In all, more than 75 percent of American workers are at companies that qualify for exemptions from the law.
  • Health care providers and first responders, as well as certain federal government employees, can also be denied the paid leave.
  • Democrats also raised alarm that the new guidelines added requirements that were not in the original law, including that employers could ask employees for certification of the need to take leave, and that employers needed to have work for the employee to do in order for workers to qualify for leave.

Iowa Starting Line: Joni Ernst Touts Paid Sick Leave She Voted Against

By: Elizabeth Meyer

March 30, 2020

Key Points:

  • Sen. Joni Ernst joined Gov. Kim Reynolds Sunday at her daily press briefing via video conference to outline key provisions of the three bills signed by President Trump to assist individual Americans, small businesses and large companies impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.
  • Lost amid the list of accomplishments, however, was the vote both Iowa senators took to strip “phase two” legislation, the “Families First Coronavirus Response Act,” of its paid sick leave provision.
  • Ernst and Grassley were among the 50 senators to vote in favor of Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson’s amendment “To strike Federally mandated sick pay and paid family leave and replace it with financial support provided through the State administered unemployment insurance systems and funds.”
  • The amendment failed because it did not garner the 60 votes necessary for passage. The Iowa senators ultimately voted for the bill, which passed March 18.
  • At Reynolds’ Sunday press conference, Ernst called the paid sick leave provision “a significant part” of the phase two bill.
  • At a town hall meeting March 6, in response to a question from the audience about federally mandated paid sick leave, Ernst said she did not support it.