House GOP Continues to Deny Economic Realities for American Women

Washington, DC—The House Majority today dug in and continued to deny the financial pressures facing American women, refusing to even debate the Paycheck Fairness Act on the floor. The Senate will take up the bill on Tuesday and President Obama has committed to signing the legislation should it come to his desk. The Paycheck Fairness Act closes loopholes in the Equal Pay Act of 1963 by putting teeth in that law's enforcement provisions and banning retaliation against workers who discuss their wages. Yesterday, the legislation's author, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, D-CT, and other House Democrats held a hearing on the subject where they heard from two women who received lower salaries than their male counterparts for years.

DeLauro made the following remarks on the House floor today:

Mr. Chairman. I rise in opposition to the previous question. Defeat of the previous question will allow the gentleman from Florida to amend the rule to include consideration of the Paycheck Fairness Act, an act that addresses the financial pressures facing women today and the need to close the gender wage gap.

Almost fifty years after Congress passed the Equal Pay Act to end the "serious and endemic" problem of unequal wages, women – now one half of the workforce – are still making only 77 cents on the dollar as compared to men. This holds true across occupations and education levels.

Some have called unequal pay "a myth" and a "distraction." It is neither. Women should be paid the same as men for the same work. That is what paycheck fairness is all about – same job, same pay.

Yesterday, the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee heard from two women affected by pay discrimination – Ann Marie Duchon and Terri Kelly. Both women shared their stories of fighting for seven years to see their pay inequity remedied.

And, like the nearly two thirds of women today who are either a breadwinner or co-breadwinner, both women said that their families depend and rely on their income – pay discrimination not only affects them, but their children and their husbands.

Pay inequity is at the root of the financial pressures facing women today. It is critical that we pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, take the next steps to stop discrimination in the first place by putting an end to pay secrecy, strengthen workers' ability to challenge discrimination, and bring the equal pay law into line with other civil rights laws. The House has passed the bill twice on a bipartisan basis. Let's do it again.

I urge my colleagues to defeat the previous question.