June 5, 2012



Harry Reid and his liberal allies proved once again today that they are more interested in catering to their liberal base and playing up a phony “war on women” than in easing the economic pain families throughout the country are feeling.

Instead of passing a budget, which the Senate has refused to do for more than 1,000 days now, or taking up one of the many useful bills the House of Representatives has passed that would create jobs, limit burdensome regulations on small businesses, defund Planned Parenthood or many other wasteful projects, Reid once again moved to pass the so-called “Paycheck Fairness Act.”

I wrote about this dreadful bill in November 2010, before Harry Reid’s last failed attempt to pass it, and it’s as terrible an idea now as it was then and as it has been since the 1970s when the feminists first dreamed it up.

This bill is another costly item on the feminists’ wish lists that would allow the federal government to artificially inflate salaries for jobs traditionally held by women, while freezing wages for jobs traditionally performed by men and empowering women to sue their employers to enforce these controlled wages.

Liberals claim this bill will address the “gender wage gap,” and cite the misleading figure that women make 77 cents for every dollar men earn. What those complaining about this so-called wage gap fail to mention is that this figure does not take into account the reality that women have and make choices, and often choose to work fewer hours and to come in and out of the workforce as they have children or attend to other family responsibilities. Additionally, men, more often than women take high-risk and unpleasant jobs, suffering 90 percent of occupational fatalities, so they should earn more in these positions.

If the liberals are so concerned with a gender wage gap, they should start with their own Congressional office staff. According to publicly available reports, Nancy Pelosi’s female employees earned an average annual salary of $96,394 in fiscal year 2011. Male employees earned $123,000 on average, a difference of 27.6 percent.

Elaine Chao, Secretary of Labor under President George W. Bush, correctly called the Paycheck Fairness Act a “job killing, trial attorney bonanza.” She said it would encourage employers to view female applicants as instigators of lawsuits instead of contributors to productivity.

Take Action

We applaud the Senators who stood up against phony allegations of a “war on women” and voted against a Motion to Proceed to discussion of this terrible bill. Here is the roll call vote. Please contact your Senators and either thank them or hold them to task for today’s vote.

Please note that Harry Reid voted NO on this bill as a procedural maneuver to reserve himself the right to bring the bill to the floor again.





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