Your Plan Costs More Than Mine: The Price Tag for Paid Leave

Children may be priceless, but taking leave to care for them, or for an illness for that matter, certainly isn’t. The collective cost of paying for a variety of leave benefits could top many billions of dollars each year, according to several estimates.

The cost of such benefits matters because paying for paid leave, and the ultimate fiscal impact of doing so, is one of the largest barriers to consensus and compromise among lawmakers’ different plans to provide paid time off to care for a family member or tend to an illness.

Democrats want a national paid leave plan where ...