Proposals to establish a national paid family leave program have gained momentum recently. President Trump even called for a plan in his State of the Union address. Yet past proposals have failed to square the circle of mandating paid family leave for workers without imposing substantial costs on businesses or the federal government. Fortunately, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., has authored a bill based on a proposal by the Independent Women’s Forum that appears to do just that. While concrete details still need to be hammered out, the idea provides taxpayers with reason to be cautiously optimistic that a fiscally responsible paid family leave solution could be on the horizon.

As of 2016, 87 percent of American workers did not have access to paid family leave through their jobs. Expanding the options for working parents would be good, but proposals to force businesses to offer a paid family leave benefit would impose costs that would show up elsewhere (likely in the form of higher prices or lower base salaries). On the other hand, leaving the government to subsidize parental leave would require an expensive new entitlement program. The American Action Forum estimates that the FAMILY Act, legislation proposed by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., that would establish a 12-week paid family leave entitlement, would have a total cost of anywhere between $160 billion to an eye-popping $997 billion annually.