It took seven years and the votes to override two vetoes to pass the family-leave law guaranteeing workers at larger companies time off, without pay, to care for a new child or sick relative.
Now, on the law's fifth anniversary, obstacles to expanding it loom large."I'm going to find one way or another to raise this," Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., the law's chief author, said Thursday.
Dodd plans to push an expansion as part of a larger initiative on child care, a White House priority that has bipartisan backing in Congress. More than 40 child-care bills have been introduced in recent months.
Election-year politics could help Dodd, who points out that the law is popular with voters. But the issue promises to be a tough sell on Capitol Hill, where some of the lawmakers who originally opposed it remain in office, including Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss.
Dodd wants to expand the law to cover businesses with at least 25 employees, down from the current threshold of 50. That would cover 13 million more workers.
In addition to congressional opposition, small businesses are worried about meeting a new federal requirement.
John Satagaj, president of the Small Business Legislative Council, said it would be difficult for many small companies to offer lengthy, unpaid leave because they may not have enough workers to cover.
"Many of them . . . may have flexible policies now," he said. "Small businesses typically do, in trying to work things out on a case-by-case basis with their employees."
The family-leave law allows workers up to 12 weeks unpaid leave after the birth or adoption of a child, or to care for their own or a family member's serious illness. About 12 million workers took advantage of benefits offered by the law from January 1994 through June 1995, according to a commission created by Congress.
Efforts to pass the law began in the 1980s. It took years to muster enough votes to pass Congress. The law was vetoed twice by then-President George Bush, a Republican, before President Clinton signed it in a Rose Garden ceremony just two weeks after taking office.