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.

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.”

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.