Our guest bloggers are Sarah Jane Glynn, a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and Tara Dawson McGuinness, Senior Vice President for CAPAF.

Former State department official Anne-Marie Slaughter’s piece in the Atlantic, entitled “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All,” has set off a fire-storm of discussion about women and men in the work force. Whether you agree with Slaughter, Salon writer Rebecca Traister (who takes on Slaughter’s arguments), or facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg (who has provided advice on this topic), there are certainly policy solutions that would address the problems facing parents in the modern workplace. Here are four policy ideas that could help America’s government and businesses keep up with its families:

1) Paid Family And Medical Leave Insurance: In spite of the fact that all of the adults in most families are employed, the United States is the only industrialized nation that does not guarantee workers paid parental leave, and one of only a handful that does not provide other types of paid caregiving leave. The Center for American Progress’ proposal for paid family and medical leave would increase women’s employment and promote gender equity.

2) Paid Sick Days: Nearly 4 in 10 working women do not have access to paid sick days and female-dominated industries are the least likely to offer paid sick days, in spite of the fact that women are the most likely to need to miss work to care for a sick child, partner, or parent. The Healthy Families Act would provide workers with the right to earn paid sick days to recover from their own short-term illnesses or to care for an ill family member.

3) Right To Request Workplace Flexibility: Discrimination against workers with family caregiving responsibilities is illegal throughout Europe, but not in the United States, where workers also lack the ability to request workplace flexibility without retaliation. Modeled on similar legislation in the U.K. and Australia, the Working Families Flexibility Act would allow workers to request flexible working conditions without fear of negative consequences, and would ensure that employers take those requests seriously.

4) Equal Pay: Women are more likely than men to withdraw from the workforce to provide family care, in part because they tend to earn less money than their male partners. Some employers justify paying women less because they fear their female workers will leave in order to stay home. The Paycheck Fairness Act would help empower women to demand equal pay, and would make it harder for employers to discriminate against women.

73 percent of the country’s moms are working, and it is about time that policy took into account this important change in the makeup of the workforce.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers this month introduced legislation that would allow the two government mortgage agencies to take drastic action to help struggling homeowners. The legislation would mandate principal reduction programs at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, allowing the agencies to follow in the footsteps of other countries that have used debt forgiveness to alleviate the pain of the housing crisis.

Edward DeMarco, the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has been an ardent opponent of principal reduction but has been considering a proposal that would allow Fannie and Freddie to reduce debt on the mortgages it owns. Though DeMarco has yet to make a formal decision, a new study from Amherst Securities Group found that principal reduction is the most effective way of keeping homeowners from entering foreclosure, CNN Money reports:

Only 12% of borrowers who received principal reductions re-defaulted in 2011, Amherst found. That’s compared with 23% of borrowers who received mortgage modifications with interest rate reductions (but no principal reduction) and 30% who received forbearance, which postpones their debt repayment.

“[Modifications] with principal forgiveness are apt to be most effective, as the borrower no longer owes the money — so he is no longer hopelessly underwater,” said Laurie Goodman, Amherst’s housing market analyst and one of the authors of the report.

Principal reductions have accounted for 40 percent of the modifications done by banks in 2012, but with a few small exceptions, Fannie and Freddie will not authorize principal reductions on their loans.

The Amherst report is more evidence that principal reduction is good for homeowners and mortgage servicers, as Center for American Progress policy analyst John Griffith argued in March.

“Fewer foreclosures help more than just struggling homeowners. Local housing markets are better off, as each foreclosure decreases the value of every other home in the neighborhood,” Griffith wrote. “And since the average foreclosure costs more than $50,000 to the lender or investor, avoiding default often helps the books of Fannie and Freddie, which in turn benefits every taxpayer on the hook for their losses. So while principal reduction will give more struggling homeowners a fighting chance at staying in their homes, this is not a matter of charity. It’s good business.”

The Washington Post reported today that Bain Capital, the private equity firm Mitt Romney headed for 15 years, invested extensively in companies that moved jobs overseas to low-wage countries like China. The practice contradicts the rhetoric of candidate Romney, who since announcing his presidential ambitions, has criticized government policies that have led to jobs, particularly those in manufacturing, moving offshore.

Rather than dispute the substance of the article, the Romney campaign has responded to the Post piece by parsing words, claiming that the story is “fundamentally flawed” for not differentiating between the technical definitions of “outsourcing” and “offshoring”:

“This is a fundamentally flawed story that does not differentiate between domestic outsourcing versus offshoring nor versus work done overseas to support U.S. exports. Mitt Romney spent 25 years in the real world economy so he understands why jobs come and they go,” Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said. “As president, he will implement policies that make it easier and more attractive for companies to create jobs here at home. President Obama’s attacks on profit and job creators make it less attractive to create jobs in the U.S.”

Technically, the campaign is correct. The official definition of outsourcing is pushing activities outside of the company that could have been performed in-house. A company can outsource, while keeping the activity domestic. Offshoring is the practice of sending jobs overseas.

However, outsourcing is commonly used to describe the practice of moving jobs to foreign countries. But just to be clear, ThinkProgress has changed the text of the Post article so that the proper technical terms are used:

While Bain was not the largest player in the outsourcing offshoring field, the private equity firm was involved early on, at a time when the departure of jobs from the United States was beginning to accelerate and new companies were emerging as handmaidens to this outflow of employment.

Bain played several roles in helping these outsourcing offshoring companies, such as investing venture capital so they could grow and providing management and strategic business advice as they navigated this rapidly developing field. [...]

According to a news release issued by Modus Media in 1997, its expansion of outsourcing offshoring services took place in close consultation with Bain. Terry Leahy, Modus’s chairman and chief executive, was quoted in the release as saying he would be “working closely with Bain on strategic expansion.” At the time, three Bain directors sat on the corporate board of Modus.

This simply doesn’t change the fact that Bain, under Romney, invested in companies whose sole purpose was to move jobs to other countries, directly countering the narrative that Romney has been trying to set.

During a February speech in Toledo, Ohio, Mitt Romney blasted China for taking American jobs. “They’ve been able to put American businesses out of business and kill American jobs,” Romney said. And that was certainly not the only time that Romney lamented that jobs, specifically in manufacturing, have been moving to China.

“Thirty years ago, America was overwhelmingly the largest manufacturing economy in the world,” he said during a speech in Nevada last year. “This year, China is slated to pass us.” Romney’s jobs plan is also heavy on anti-China rhetoric.

But as the Washington Post reported, Bain Capital, the private equity firm that Romney headed, played its own part in sending jobs to low-wage countries, including China. In fact, Bain “invested in a series of firms that specialized in relocating jobs done by American workers to new facilities in low-wage countries like China and India.”

In one example, Bain was the largest shareholder in a company called Modus Media, which “specialized in helping companies outsource their manufacturing“:

Modus Media told the SEC it was performing outsource packaging and hardware assembly for IBM, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Computer Corp. The filing disclosed that Modus had operations on four continents, including Asian facilities in Singapore, Taiwan, China and South Korea, and European facilities in Ireland and France, and a center in Australia. [...]

According to a news release issued by Modus Media in 1997, its expansion of outsourcing services took place in close consultation with Bain. Terry Leahy, Modus’s chairman and chief executive, was quoted in the release as saying he would be “working closely with Bain on strategic expansion.”.

Other companies that Bain invested in sent jobs all over the world, including to Ireland and Mexico, while Romney has tried to claim that Bain was all about creating jobs and turning around American companies that otherwise would have gone under.

As one of Romney’s former partners put it,”I never thought of what I do for a living as job creation…The primary goal of private equity is to create wealth for your investors.” And that’s what Bain did, even if it meant helping companies move operations to the same country Romney now blasts for stealing American jobs.

In an effort to paint himself as an independent who doesn’t always toe the party line, Montana Rep. Denny Rehberg (R) is touting his opposition to the House Republican budget in an ad released by the Montana Republican party. Rehberg, who is running to unseat Sen. Jon Tester (D), voted against the GOP’s budget plan for the second consecutive year because of its draconian cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.

The ad mentions multiple votes on which Rehberg bucked his party before adding that he “refused to support a Republican budget plan that could harm the Medicare programs so many of Montana’s seniors rely on”:

Watch it:

Rehberg was one of 10 Republicans to vote against the budget in 2012; he was one of four to oppose it in 2011. Rep. David McKinley (R-WV), who also opposed the budget this year, has circulated campaign flyers explaining that he voted against the budget “because of the plan’s negative impact on northern West Virginia seniors.”