Obama will make a speech calling on Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. New equal pay push for midterms

At the White House on Tuesday, President Barack Obama will sign two executive actions on equal pay, as Senate Democrats move for a show vote this week on the Paycheck Fairness Act — launching Democrats’ first large-scale coordinated message effort ahead of this year’s midterms.

One of the new executive orders on Tuesday, Equal Pay Day, will prohibit federal contractors from retaliating against workers who discuss their salaries — a move one White House official called “a critical tool to encourage pay transparency.”


Obama will also sign a presidential memorandum instructing Labor Secretary Tom Perez to create new regulations requiring federal contractors to report salary summary data to the government, including sex and race breakdowns. The hope, according to the White House, is that this will encourage other employers to submit data voluntarily, enabling more targeted government enforcement.

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The president will bring Lilly Ledbetter — namesake of the first bill he signed as president, which expanded women’s ability to recover wages lost to discrimination — back to the White House for the signing event in the East Room on Tuesday.

And Obama will make a speech calling on Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act — but, as with the minimum wage increase for federal contractors Obama announced in his State of the Union in January, the White House official called this new executive order another instance of “leading by example” when Congress won’t act.

Meanwhile, as Senate Democrats vote on Tuesday, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee will launch a new “GOP Pay Gap” branding campaign that will include the release of state-by-state data on the pay differences, a high-five figures online advertising campaign, a social media campaign and specified email alerts to supporters tracking the votes.

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There’s a reason Democrats are making such a push on equal pay: They say their polls and focus groups are showing them that pressing Republicans on their opposition to the bill is quickly ticking up to be one of their most effective negative messages for persuadable voters this year. According to Democrats who’ve seen the numbers, women respond, men respond — in the same kind of high numbers, no matter where they are in the country.

“This is not just an issue that appeals to or affects women. As the economy has recovered, too many American families are being left behind,” said DSCC Executive Director Guy Cecil. “And the only response Republicans have is to pretend the problem doesn’t exist at all.”

The difference between the Democratic and Republican positions on equal pay, argued EMILY’s List press secretary Marcy Stech, “underscores the clearest difference between the parties.”

The Democratic National Committee will be doing its own social media campaign, paired with a Web video going out to supporters and a petition it has prepared to send out to its own email list, along with those of the other national Democratic campaign committees.

Tuesday morning, together with EMILY’s List, the DNC will hold a call with female Hispanic leaders to combine two demographic appeals: Women overall make 77 cents on the dollar compared with men, but Hispanic women make 54 cents on the dollar.

Meanwhile, EMILY’s List has positioned itself as the nexus of information and guidance on equal pay at the local level. The group has guided candidates through creating online petitions and talking points, and its affiliated research arm, American Women, released state-by-state “toolkits” last week that include a tailored conversation guide with highlighted local statistics on how each state ranks on women’s economic issues.

Those include each state’s women’s economic grade from the Center for American Progress, and polls like the ones cited in its Shriver Report showing how much support for women’s economic issues has grown — highest among Democrats, but with Republicans and independents not far behind.

Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress and an informal adviser who’s been pushing the White House behind the scenes to focus more on the potency of women’s issues this year, said support for equal pay specifically is “through the roof.”

Katie Packer Gage, a Republican consultant who started a firm last year geared around helping her party appeal to women, acknowledges that from the data she has seen, women do believe that they get paid less for the same job men do. She blames that on anecdotal evidence shared among women and a disinformation campaign from Democrats.

The only way to fight that, Gage says, is for Republicans to move quickly to speak out strongly in favor of equal pay for equal work, eliminating any rhetorical distance with Democrats, and then remind voters they support the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Then, Gage said, Republicans need to press the idea that the bill won’t be enough, and that these problems can’t be fixed by that legislation — or by anything else likely to come out of Washington.

“Ever notice that the so-called Paycheck Fairness Act is about 10 times longer than the bills originally surrounding pay fairness? It’s so obviously a political statement,” she said. “In an honest world, this bill would be called the Trial Lawyer Job Security Act.”

Gage has told GOP candidates to hit Democrats with the distraction argument and turn the pitch to female voters back on them by talking about the women who, she says, are losing their insurance plans under Obamacare.

Even within the broader pitch to women that’s shaping Democrats’ 2014 strategy, equal pay sticks out. Unlike just about every other issue within the women’s agenda and beyond, every competitive Democrat is on the same page, and the Republican counterargument is generally limited to calling the conversation a distraction and the proposed legislative solution unnecessary.

“I don’t really understand the Republican argument,” Tanden said. “It’s certainly not an argument that seems like it’s resonating with voters.”

CORRECTION: Lilly Ledbetter's name was misspelled in an earlier version of this story.

CORRECTION: Corrected by: David Cohen @ 04/06/2014 03:12 PM CORRECTION: Lilly Ledbetter's name was misspelled in an earlier version of this story.