President Obama, during the State of the Union address on Tuesday: "Today, women make up about half our workforce, but they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it's an embarrassment. A woman deserves equal pay for equal work."
Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Washington), who delivered the official Republican response to the President's speech, was asked about this issue on Wednesday: "Yes, absolutely. Republicans and I support equal pay for equal work."
what eye thynk: I believe Ms. Rodgers and her fellow Republicans are a bit confused over the meaning of the word "support." To begin with, look at their record on the Lilly Ledbetter Equal Pay Act.
Ms. Ledbetter discovered too late that her work as an executive for Goodyear was compensated at a rate substantially below that of her male counterparts. She sued for back pay. The Supreme Court denied her claim because she hadn't filed her suit within 180 days of her first paycheck. (She didn't discover the inequality until she was retiring and found her pension was lower than a male co-worker's.) The act that bears her name removed the statute of limitations on equal pay cases. The Lilly Ledbetter Act was the first piece of legislation that then newly inaugurated President Obama signed into law in January 2009. The 111 th Congress, which had a Democratic majority in both Houses, passed the bill mostly along party lines with all but a handful of Republicans voting "No."
I'm having trouble seeing the support here.
Then there is this quote from the Republican Party's pet news station Fox News, where anchor Martha MacCallum was discussing the equal pay issue on Wednesday evening: "I think most women do not want to be treated as sort of a special class of citizens. They want to go to work every day, they want to get paid for being a professional, for doing their job really well. And they don't want to be treated like some group of people who have to be, you know, given a little special handout just to make sure that they're okay.
Fox's liberal commentator Alan Colmes objected, "It's not a special handout. It's equality. It's equal pay for equal work." Ms. MacCallum's response: "Many women get paid exactly what they're worth, Alan."
What does that even mean?
Go back to 2013 and you have Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) explaining why she is against pay equality legislation. "You know, I've always said that I didn't want to be given a job because I was a female, I wanted it because I was the most well-qualified person for the job. And making certain that companies are going to move forward in that vein, that is what women want. They don't want the decisions made in Washington. They want...the control and the ability to make those decisions for themselves."
But, Ms. Blackburn, if you are the "most well-qualified person for the job", wouldn't you expect to be paid a salary that supported your qualifications? And if somebody gives me the "ability to make those decisions" myself, I'll tell ya, I'm going for the big bucks. Maybe you're nobler than I am and requested a reduced compensation package when you took your oath of office?
And how can we forget 2012 when the Paycheck Fairness Act was brought before Congress for the second time...and Senate Republicans boasted of filibustering it into failure. Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine)--one of the few moderate Republicans left in the world--told reporters, "I think this bill would result in excessive litigation that would impose a real burden, particularly on small businesses."
Well, actually, no, it wouldn't. If businesses, no matter the size, paid women and men equally for the same job, there would BE no litigation, and thus no burden.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines "support" as "to promote the interests or cause of; to uphold or defend as valid or right."
Republicans can continue to claim they "support" pay equity, but the claim is bogus. Their rhetoric shows it. Their voting record proves it. And, most importantly, women know it.
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