Mitch McConnell Compares ‘Obsession’ With Closing Gender Pay Gap To Blowing ‘A Few Kisses’

BY REBECCA LEBER/Think Progress

On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) honored Equal Pay Day — a day that symbolizes the amount of time it takes women to earn what men make in a year — by accusing Democrats and President Obama of a “never-ending political road show” that merely blows “a few kisses” to their voter base.

“Instead of focusing on jobs, he launched into another confusing attack on the left’s latest bizarre obsession,” McConnell said on the Senate floor Tuesday. “Just think about that. The percentage of Americans in the workforce is at an almost four-decade low, and Democrats chose to ignore serious job-creation ideas so they could blow a few kisses to their powerful pals on the left.”

McConnell argued the fact that women still earn 77 percent of what men make should take a backseat to more serious Republican priorities. These priorities typically include building Keystone XL pipeline and repealing Obamacare (which Republicans have attempted more than 50 times).

Leading up to Democrats’ latest push for equal pay, Republicans have claimed that the gender wage gap is a “myth” and that it is “condescending” to discuss. But the reality is that women still earn less even when they achieve the same education and job level, with gender discrimination accounting for as much as much as 40 percent of their pay gap.

In the past, McConnell’s voting record against women has not stopped him from taking credit anyway. He once touted the Violence Against Women Act to women voters, although he opposed it in both 1993 and 2012. McConnell has also opposed both the Lilly Ledbetter Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act. And the very health care law that McConnell wants to repeal prevents insurance companies from charging women more and ensures 

GOP Spokesperson Asked What Republicans Are Willing To Do To Close Gender Pay Gap, Comes Up Empty

BY IGOR VOLSKY/Think Progress

A spokesperson for the Republican National Committee (RNC) was unable to explain how the GOP would address the pay disparity gap between men and women during an appearance on MSNBC Tuesday and instead repeatedly insisted that Democrats were misleading the public about the issue.

Kirsten Kukowski, the RNC’s National Press Secretary, dodged questions about the Republican Party’s solutions three different times. Instead, she reiterated that Republicans believe “people should be paid equal pay for equal work” but claimed that the Paycheck Fairness Act would tie down employers in regulations. Pressed for a solution, however, Kurkowski would only say that lawmakers should look to “best corporate practices” and allow for additional flex time. Watch it:

The Paycheck Fairness Act increases pay transparency by prohibiting employers from punishing workers who share their salary information and allowing employees to discuss their salaries without fear of losing their jobs. Under the Act, businesses must identify a legitimate business-related reason for maintaining a pay inequity and prove that there are no comparable alternatives that would not result in a pay disparity. The measure only applies to employees who are performing the same job with the same skill, responsibilities, and working conditions.

The GOP has responded to the Democrats’ push for pay equity by releasing a memo, of which Kukowski is listed as the primary author. The document seeks to dismiss concerns about equal pay by questioning the validity of the often-used statistic showing that women, on average, earn 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. “That number comes from the average earnings of women in all positions and contrasts it with the average earning of men in all positions,” the memo notes. “But women and men hold different jobs in different industries and varying levels of experience.”

But research has shown that the problem of pay equity goes beyond a single statistic. Women earn less than men in their very first year out of college — and in almost every job category tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Women even earn less than men in the 20 most common occupations for full-time working women — including education, nursing, and social work — and in the highest paid fields.

Kukowski, along with other critics, also noted that using an average number would mean that the median pay for women in the White House “is 88 cents for every dollar a man makes.” The administration denies that it discriminates against women, noting that discrimination is not fully responsible for the wage gap. Instead, women are often steered away from high-level positions or have trouble starting a family given the lack of paid family leave and child care assistance programs. A recent study by economists Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn, however, found that while experience, occupation, and industry explain much of the gap, more than 40 percent could be the result of discrimination.

Ultimately, however, Republicans don’t seem too concerned about the pay equity problem. The GOP memo notes that the issue is simply a distraction from the health care law. “ObamaCare is deeply unpopular, and they don’t want to talk about how policy cancellations are hurting women, or about how women are losing access to the doctors of their choice, or about how it’s meant smaller paychecks for working women (and men),” it says.

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• Equal Pay

Congresswoman Says She Supports Equal Pay Laws, Voted Against Them Four Times

BY BRYCE COVERT/Think Progress

On CNN Wednesday, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) told host Wolf Blitzer that she supports equal pay for women despite voting against a measure that would help women achieve that goal.

In response to a question from Blitzer about President Obama’s call for equal pay in his State of the Union Address on Tuesday and whether she is “with the President when he says that there should be laws mandating equal pay for equal work for women,” McMorris Rodgers, who gave the official Republican response, replied:

Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Republicans and I support equal pay for equal work.My message last night was one about empowering everyone in this country, no matter what your background, no matter where you live, what corner of the country, no matter what your experiences are. We want you to have the opportunity for a better life.

Watch:

But McMorris Rodgers actually voted against laws meant to address the pay disparity between men and women four times. She voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Acttwice, which lengthened the time for victims of pay discrimination to file a complaint. She also voted twice against the Paycheck Fairness Act, a measure aimed at closing the gender wage gap by ending the practice of salary secrecy, thus giving women and others a better chance of rooting out discrimination, narrowing the guidelines for what pay disparities are justified, and strengthening penalties for discrimination as a way to deter it, among other things.

Republicans may say they support equal pay, but they voted unanimously against the Paycheck Fairness Act in the Senate 2010 and just 10 voted for it in the House. Senate Republicans blocked it again in 2012 with a filibuster.

Meanwhile, progress on closing the gender pay gap has stalled. Women have made just 77 cents, on average, for every dollar a man makes for the past five years.

Texas Democrats accuse Perry of vetoing equal pay bill

By Arturo Garcia/Raw Story

Democrats in the Texas legislature accused Gov. Rick Perry (R) on Friday of vetoing a bill that would have given women more chances to fight pay discrimination,the Dallas Morning News reported.

The measure, HB 950, would have allowed women to sue their employers in state court beyond the current 180-day period after receiving a paycheck they claim was unfair and sue for two years of discriminatory payments. It passed in the state House in April 2013 and the state Senate in May 2013. But a spokesperson for state Rep. Senfronia Thompson, who wrote the House version of the bill, said she was told by Perry’s office that he struck it down.

“I am very surprised that Governor Perry does not see the value in it,” state Sen. Wendy Davis (D) told the News. Davis introduced the Senate version of the bill.

Davis also told the Houston Chronicle that Perry vetoed the bill because it mirrored the Lilly Ledbetter Equal Pay Act, a federal law passed in 2009. She questioned that reasoning in a press conference on Saturday, citing the bill’s provision allowing plaintiffs to sue in a state district court.

“These courts are less burdensome financially and are presided over by a judge elected by Texans, and consisting of a jury of their peers” Davis said at the press conference.

By vetoing the bill, Davis said, Perry showed “a callous disregard for the wages that are required to support Texas families.”

The state Supreme Court ruled in August 2012 (PDF) that the Lily Ledbetter Act may not be integrated into the state Commission on Human Rights Act.

Perry’s office did not comment on the allegations. According to the Chronicle, he has until Sunday to issue vetos.

Listen to Davis’ statements, posted online by the Chronicle on Friday, below.

GOP Senator: I Voted Against Equal Pay For Women Because We Have Enough Laws

By Ian Millhiser, Josh Israel and Sy Mukherjee/Think Progress

WARREN, NH — Women in full-time year-round jobs earned 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man. Yet, at a town hall earlier this week, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) claimed that Congress has done enough to ensure that women receive equal pay for equal work. Indeed, she justified her vote against legislation intended to prevent employers from dodging federal equal pay lawwith an excuse similar to the National Rifle Association’s explanation for why we do not need any more gun laws — we just need to enforce the ones we have:

QUESTION: My grandmother, who was an extremely intelligent woman, trained many, many men who then became her boss, and so on and so forth. [She] never received a pension, never, um, was really paid what she was worth. And I was disappointed that you voted against the Equal Pay Act, but maybe there was something in the bill that you thought would be detrimental to the economy or whatever. But I was curious if you could explain your philosophy about equal pay and how, maybe, you could suggest something that we could all agree upon so that women would stop making 75 cents for every dollar a man makes . . . .

AYOTTE: We have existing laws — Title VII, um, Lilly Ledbetter, all those existing protections in place — that, I believe, enforce and provide that people doing equal jobs are, certainly in this country, should receive equal pay. So, uh, that bill, in my view, didn’t add — in fact I think it created a lot of additional burdens that would have been hard, um, to make it more difficult for job creators to create jobs. . . . The reason that I voted against that specific bill is that, I looked at it, and there were already existing laws that need to be enforced and can be enforced and I didn’t feel like adding that layer was going to help us better get at the equal pay issue.

Watch it:

 

It should go without saying that, if similarly situated women are not making the same amount as their male colleagues, then we aren’t doing enough to close this pay gap. So Ayotte’s suggestion that our current laws are sufficient cannot be squared with the reality facing women in the workplace. The backbone of modern workplace discrimination law was formed by theEqual Pay Act of 1963 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and it is indeed true that the pay gap narrowed significantly in the quarter-century after these workplace protections became law. According to data from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, however, progress on the pay gap stalled in the 1990s, and has been only slightly more than flat ever since:

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which Ayotte refers to in her remarks, overruled an erroneous Supreme Court decision that reduced existing protections for women. It did not expand workers’ rights beyond what they already enjoyed prior to the Supreme Court’s decision to roll back civil rights law.

The bill that Ayotte opposed was the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would hardly “make it more difficult for job creators to create jobs,” as Ayotte suggests. Currently, employers can escape liability under the Equal Pay Act even if they engaged in completely irrational discrimination that impacts a female worker. The Paycheck Fairness Act would change this to ensure that employer’s pay decisions are rooted in legitimate business reasons to pay one employee more than another — reasons like “education, training, or experience” — and not something completely arbitrary. It also provides a few additional protections to women, such as forbidding employers from retaliating against employees who try to discover how their pay compares to that of their colleagues.

So when Ayotte voted against this bill, she stood up for employer’s rights to make completely irrational judgments about how much a female worker should be paid, and their right to retaliate against employees who are trying to figure out if they are being treated fairly.

GOP Senate Candidate Akin: ‘Free Enterprise’ Means Being Allowed To Deny Equal Pay To Women

By Aviva Shen/Think Progress

Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) has struggled with a well-established woman problem in his Senate campaign, ever since he claimed women could not get pregnant from “legitimate rape.” After he said his opponent, incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), was not “ladylike,” her campaignreleased a video of Akin suggesting that businesses should be allowed to pay women less than men.

When a man asked him why he voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, Akin said he didn’t support the idea that “government should be telling people what you pay and what you don’t pay.”

AUDIENCE MEMBER: You voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Why do you think it is okay for a woman to be paid less for doing the same work as a man?

AKIN: Well, first of all, the premise of your question is that I’m making that particular distinction. I believe in free enterprise. I don’t think the government should be telling people what you pay and what you don’t pay. I think it’s about freedom. If someone what’s to hire somebody and they agree on a salary, that’s fine, however it wants to work. So, the government sticking its nose into all kinds of things has gotten us into huge trouble.

Watch it:

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was the first bill President Obama signed into law and eases the burden on women to prove paycheck discrimination. Akin, along with all but three House Republicans, voted against the bill. Republicans blocked another pay equity bill, the Paycheck Fairness Act, earlier this summer; it would create larger penalties for employers who pay women less than men and strengthen protections for women who sue for equal pay.

Romney Campaign Enlists GOP Women Who Opposed Equal Pay Bills To Attack Obama

By Josh Israel/Think Progress

As part of its bizarre strategy of blaming President Obama for the GOP’s “war on women,” the Romney campaign released statements today from two Republican Congresswomen, Reps. Mary Bono Mack (R-CA) and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA). The statements correctly note that women have been hit particularly hard by job losses in recent years, butmisleadingly lay the blame for those losses on Obama, just as Romney himself has been doing recently.

“Mitt Romney supports pay equity for women and, as president, will do what President Obama has not — implement pro-growth economic policies that will allow women and all Americans to finally get back to work,” wrote McMorris Rodgers. “Women in the Obama economy are facing hardships of historical proportions,” added Bono Mack. “Simply put, women cannot afford four more years of Barack Obama.”

But their concern for pay equity and women in the workplace must be a recent development. Both congresswomen voted against the landmark Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 — which empowers women to seek restitution for pay discrimination — and both voted against the proposed Paycheck Fairness Act, which would have made it easier for women to fight pay inequality.

This morning, the Romney campaign refused to say during a conference call whether Romney supports the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the first law that President Obama signed. The campaign later scrambled to assert that Romney “supports pay equity” and “is not looking to change current law.”

UPDATE

Romney’s campaign followed these two releases with a statement from his former Massachusetts Lt. Governor, Kerry Healey (R). Though she too takes the curious tact of blaming her party’s “war on women” on President Obama, American Bridge 21st Century notes that while in office, Healey “publicly condemned Romney for vetoing spending for women’s health, including breast and cervical cancer screenings and treatment, calling the move: ‘penny-wise, pound-foolish.’”

Gov. Scott Walker repeals Wisconsin Equal Pay law

By David Ferguson/Raw Story

With little fanfare, union-busting Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) yesterday signed a repeal of Wisconsin’s equal pay act, which gave people who discover they’ve been discriminated against more time to file suit and the right to do so outside of federal courts.

The Equal Pay Enforcement Act was passed in 2009 and gave workers avenues to pursue complaints about pay discrimination in the workplace and press charges where necessary.  The law conferred upon workers the ability to pursue their cases in circuit court rather than the federal court system, which is costlier and less accessible to average citizens. It also expanded the window in which complainants are allowed to file their complaints relative to the time when they worked under discriminatory conditions.

Much like the federal law, known as the Ledbetter Act (which President Obama signed as one of his first acts of office), the Wisconsin law was spurred by the case of Lilly Ledbetter, who suffered decades of pay discrimination without her knowledge. After she sued her employer, Goodyear, and won, the Supreme Court threw out the case because she didn’t file shortly after the discrimination began — when she didn’t know it was happening.

The Republican dominated state Senate passedSB 202 in November of 2011, which repealed the Equal Pay Enforcement Act, followed by the State Assembly in February.  Both votes passed along party lines in the currently Republican-led state bodies.

The governor quietly signed the bill into law ahead of its 5 p.m. Thursday deadline.  The law is known as Act 219.

Democrats and women’s groups have protested, saying that the measure is an attack on women’s rights.  The Equal Pay Enforcement Act’s authors, Democratic State Senators Dave Hansen (Green Bay) and Christine Sinicki (Milwaukee) criticized Walker on Thursday.

Hansen told Huffington Post, ““We are finally starting to see progress here in Wisconsin, yet like their counterparts across the country, Legislative Republicans want to turn back the clock on women’s rights in the workplace.”

Business associations lobbied heavily to overturn the 2009 Act, including Wisconsin Manufacturing and Commerce and the Wisconsin Restaurant Association.  It is estimated that for every dollar earned by men in the state of Wisconsin, women earn 75 cents, two cents less than the national average, according to the Wisconsin Alliance for Women’s Health.

WAWH Sara Finger called the repeal a “demoralizing attack on women’s rights, health and well-being.”

Economic security is a women’s health issue,” said Finger. “The salary women are paid directly affects the type and frequency of health care services they are able to access. At a time when women’s health services are becoming more expensive and harder to obtain, financial stability is essential to maintain steady access.”

Walker and other state Republicans are up for recall in June.