Congrats @PattyArquette! Thx for using your speech to advocate for #EqualPay and for understanding that when women succeed, America succeeds — Valerie Jarrett (@vj44) February 23, 2015

Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic presidential candidate who is traveling the United States to speak against unequal pay for women, paid her own female employees much less than her male staffers when she was a U.S. senator from New York, according to a new report. The Washington Free Beacon found that she paid women about 72 cents for each dollar she paid to men who worked in her Senate office from 2002 to 2008. Clinton was sworn in on Jan. 3, 2001, and served until Jan. 21, 2009, when she assumed the position of secretary of state.During her years on Capitol Hill, the median annual salary for a female staffer in Clinton’s office was $15,708.38 less than the comparable pay of a male employee, the Free Beacon found in an analysis of official Senate expenditure reports.The revelations of her unequal pay for male and female employees comes as the issue of pay equity reignited a national debate that echoed from the stage of the Oscars’ celebration in Hollywood on Sunday.Actress Patricia Arquette, in her Oscar acceptance remarks, demanded "wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America."Valeria Jarrett, President Barack Obama’s most trusted aide, immediately took up the call, even though the White House also violates pay equity.The average male employee in the Obama White House makes $88,600 a year, while his female counterpart earns an average of $78,400, according to a Washington Post analysis. Arquette’s remarks drew a sharp response from the free-market Independent Women’s Forum."Arquette should know we already have equal rights for women, including laws that protect women against wage discrimination," he group’s managing director Carrie L. Lukas said Monday."The statistical difference between men and women’s average earnings isn’t driven by sexism, but rather primarily is a results of men and women making very different choices about how to spend their time."