Today Republican Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine and Kay Bailey Hutchinson of Texas told their sistahs to just eat cake. A lone Democrat, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, followed their lead like a bird dog in heat.
All three, who had previously voted for the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009, joined the Good Old Boys We-Hate-Women Club to kill the Paycheck Fairness Act.
The Lilly Ledbetter Act removed the barriers blocking workers from seeking compensation from discriminatory pay practices. At the time, Snowe said, “This new law sends a clear message to the American people that this Congress is committed to these core principles and will continue to work in bipartisan fashion to break down the barriers of wage discrimination in our nation."
The Paycheck Fairness Act would have helped end discriminatory pay practices against women by making it easier for them to sue their employers.
"More than 45 years after passage of the Equal Pay Act, the pay gap shockingly persists with women still earning on average 77 cents to every man’s dollar. According to the National Women’s Law Center, 'This persistent pay gap translates to more than $10,000 in lost wages per year for the average female worker.”'The gap is even worse for women of color: African-American women earn 61 cents and Latinas earn 52 cents for every dollar a white non-Hispanic man earns."
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) called Wednesday's failure of the Senate to end debate on the Paycheck Fairness Act on a 58-41 vote, "outrageous" and "egregious."
"If we care about our country's future and we care about our children we will support fair pay," she said today on MSNBC. "I think it was a partisan vote I think it was egregious and it's just a sorry state of some people in Washington who put politics first and people last."
Think Progress reports, "Unsurprisingly, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has a long record of opposing women’s rights urged Congress to vote against the act, as it did with Lilly Ledbetter in 2009."
The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) also opposed the bill. Keith Smith, director of Employment and Labor Policy for NAM, said, "Manufacturers are committed to fair pay in the workplace, but it is difficult to imagine a scenario in which this bill would not have led to lower wages and fewer jobs."
The failure of this bill to pass should be a wake-up call to all Republican women everywhere, especially single mothers who are having trouble just eking out a living. It should also be a wake-up call to Democratic women to get active in order to ensure that Republicans can't keep screwing them in the back. Obviously the Grand Old Party is more interested in playing politics than it is in making life just a little easier for the working woman.
In an update, President Obama "put out a strong statement slamming the Senate GOP for blocking the bill: "I am deeply disappointed that a minority of Senators have prevented the Paycheck Fairness Act from finally being brought up for a debate and receiving a vote. This bill passed in the House almost two years ago; today, it had 58 votes to move forward, the support of the majority of Senate, and the support of the majority of Americans. ... But a partisan minority of Senators blocked this commonsense law."
Maybe the good ole boys in the Senate should cut Snowe,Collins and Hutchinson's pay.
ReplyDeleteRepublicans believe that American men are second class citizens and American women are third class citizens.
ReplyDeleteThey only help their first class corporate benefactors.
unbelievable!! When will we wise up, a minority can kill a bill, can say whether a bill can be debated, that is outrageous!!!
ReplyDeleteWhat about our good ole boy Nelson?
ReplyDeleteAs soon as Ben Nelson switches parties the better...
ReplyDeleteAt least one thing about getting lower pay...women have not suffered the unemployment that men have during the current recession!
Now all that is left is to do away with minimum wage...
I'm with Lord Truth -- let Snow et al take a pay cut.
ReplyDeleteTAO: I'm sure these goons are going after every piece of legislation that helps people and try to destroy it.
ReplyDeleteKay: I used to have some respect for Snowe, even thinking McCain would have been a lot smarter to tap her for his VP. No longer.
Bulletin to the Good Ole Boys Club:
ReplyDeleteYou no longer go out and hunt mammoths so the little woman can cook meat in the cave.
You no longer are the sole provider of household earnings.
Time to move inot the new century and new millennium, boys.
BJ: LOL, I don't think they ever will. Unable to yank the little lady along the ground by their hair, they are scared to death of this new woman and want to keep her down and beholden as long as possible.
ReplyDeleteThe number of women in the workplace has grown exponentially in my generation. Corporations will pay big money to prevent the Fair Play Act from passing.
ReplyDeleteI was reading some information on the latest James Dobson lie-fest about the crucial role of male-female relationships in marriage. He's worried that liberal American policies will destroy the fabric of our nation by undermining traditional heterosexual marriage.
I'll tell you what rots the core of American marriage: undermining families by paying women less, but hiring them more. Why pay a man a hundred dollars a day if you can pay a woman seventy-seven? Why hire a man if a woman can do the same job? That, more than anything else, creates an end to traditional male/female roles.
Of course those old roles need to continue to change, but not at the hands of corporate greed, not in this back-handed way, not at the expense of America's children in families where the two-income model is being whittled away by unemployment.
Nance: Dobson, Roberton and Falwell - until the good Lord called him - have been spouting this nonsense for decades. It's hard to believe that in the year 2010 we're still hearing this kind of voodoo. Divorce plays a big role in the demise of the two-income family as well, but we all know divorce is a sin.
ReplyDeleteNance,
ReplyDeleteTraditional marriage? You mean where the man worked, the woman did not, the man had a mistress, the woman did not, the man voted, the woman did not, the man made the decisions, the woman did not, the man lead, the woman did not, the man was, the woman was not.
This is the fabric that James Dobson is worried about being undermined? Hell, it should not only be undermined, it should be buried.
He probably thinks that spouse abuse is a sign from God.
ReplyDeleteRepublican women seems almost oxymoronic. How can any woman in her right mind support those who would gut her rights? It's like GOP Pride.
ReplyDeleteTC: It does make you wonder. They simply can't be very bright. Well, duh, she says.
ReplyDelete