It's bait and switch. Most companies I've seen jacked their rate up the year that they started their wellness program, and let you "stay" at the old rate if you did the new program.

Then of course, prices rise again - but now you are forever held to use their program and give them your data or else face retribution of them taking away your "discount". Certainly, my prices have risen more than the "discount" received from the wellness program.

It's not the maternity leave by itself, but that there is a not tiny percentage of women take maternity leave, and don't end up re-entering the workforce until years later (or ever). It happens, plenty of times. This is dependent on the family being able to survive on their spouse's salary, of course.

Given that they have been out of the workforce for a number of years, when/if they do come back, they are generally going to be able to command less salary than if they had been continuously employed. It is difficult to calculate the opportunity cost of this, but it's there.

To be fair, the 2010 budget was higher because of specific requests that year for the clean water state revolving fund, drinking water state revolving fund, and the great lakes restoration initiative). Comparing against that year is not apples-to-apples, since that wasn't supposed to set a new baseline.

On average, the budget has increased over the years. Picking those two as comparisons is great for a headline, though!

Every time Microsoft includes a new tool, they get sued for bundling or something.