Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Lawrence Ukenye. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Eli | Email Lauren The question came from a junior staffer looking for guidance in a workplace with a notoriously bad reputation for work-life balance. How do you do it all? The setting was a town hall for White House staffers being led by chief of staff JEFF ZIENTS. But the question from the staffer was geared toward the meeting’s co-hosts, Office of Management and Budget director SHALANDA YOUNG and deputy chiefs of staff JEN O’MALLEY DILLON and NATALIE QUILLIAN. The women are parents to young kids; Zients’ children are grown. The senior officials were candid. Not much can be done about the fact that someone has to come in to work on a debt ceiling deal when negotiations drag into Memorial Day weekend, or to deal with a Chinese surveillance balloon after the president decides to shoot it down on a Saturday. “No one can do it all and life is all about making hard choices,” one staffer recalled Dillon saying. What Dillon was describing was the painful reality many new parents experience in work places. It’s also one the Biden administration, separately, has taken steps to address. The number of on-campus lactation rooms for nursing mothers working at the White House have increased. Joining morning and evening meetings from home isn’t frowned upon. There’s an internal staff distribution list for new parents to share information with each other. President JOE BIDEN himself regularly tells staff that their family comes before the job. Perhaps most meaningfully, paid parental leave is now the norm. “The president has been clear to me and the team: when it comes to family or work, there is no choice,” Zients told West Wing Playbook. “It is always family first.” Biden aides were the first White House staffers to start the administration knowing they were entitled to 12 weeks of paid leave by law. In 2019, Congress passed the Federal Employees Paid Leave Act — which granted federal employees 12 weeks of parental leave to care for a newborn or adopted child — but it didn’t go into effect until the last few months of President DONALD TRUMP’s administration. For the majority of President BARACK OBAMA’s administration, White House aides only had six weeks of paid leave (he extended it to 12 weeks via executive action toward the end of his term). In addition, a new law that Biden signed last year — the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act — went into effect Tuesday, ensuring that millions of pregnant and postpartum workers will be able to request reasonable work accommodations, including additional breaks to pump breast milk and a private place to do so. Still, for some Biden staffers, the security of knowing they had 12 weeks of paid leave is what allowed them to start families while staying in their job. “It’s a game changer. I wouldn’t be here without it,” said one White House aide. National Security Council spokesperson SEAN SAVETT split his leave in two chunks after his daughter was born last October. He returned to work in December after a month and half at home to prepare for Ukrainian President VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY’s White House visit and then took the rest of his leave in January. “I really appreciate the flexibility,” he said. “I had so many older staffers come up to me and tell me how amazing it was for me to be able to take this leave, and that many of them wished they had that opportunity when they were younger and having kids.” But not everyone is taking advantage of the full 12 weeks. That’s because White House jobs by nature are temporary. And with an election coming up, staffers are feeling pressure to get as much done and out the door before a Republican administration potentially comes in and undoes the work. For some, that has meant cutting parental leave short. “It’s an internal debate that everyone in the situation has with themselves,” said a White House staffer, who described the pressure as particularly acute for parents welcoming babies this year. There’s also the question of resources. The White House has tried to make sure that staffing is covered when people are on leave. For example, ADAM HODGE was detailed from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to the National Security Council to cover for spokesperson ADRIENNE WATSON while she is on leave. But it’s not feasible for every role. Some staffers simply don’t take much time off. Others try to fill in holes while they’re out, responding to emails and phone calls from home. That pressure runs true from junior staff to senior officials. Less than two weeks after giving birth to her first child at the end of October 2021, Young attended a Cabinet meeting in-person. She was nominated to be director of OMB just a few weeks after that, effectively ending her parental leave as she began preparation for her confirmation process.
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