Republican logic flawed on equal pay bill

Yesterday, the Senate was to vote on the Lilly Ledbetter Equal Pay Act. This bill was a response to a 2007 Supreme Court decision, which declared that any pay discrimination suits must be filed within 180 days of the original offense. The new bill, chiefly sponsored by Ted Kennedy (D-MA), would declare that each paycheck was a separate offense. Therefore, the 180-day window could be applied to any paycheck received in a discriminatory manner.

Problem is, a vote never technically occurred. Because the bill’s opponents knew that they were in the minority, they filibustered, knowing that they would be able to block a cloture vote. And block they did:

What all of that means is that the bill has now been relegated once more to the proverbial ‘back burner’. The Bill didn’t actually “fail”, rather, the filibuster/cloture maneuvers are ’sleight of hand tricks’ whereby Legislators can deliberately block bills, resolutions, & legislation without it showing up on their voting record.

Why do these Republicans oppose the bill? Presumptive presidential nominee John McCain answers: “I am all in favor of pay equity for women, but this kind of legislation, as is typical of what’s being proposed by my friends on the other side of the aisle, opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems.”

To respond to Republican objections, I turn to Carpetbagger:

Well, actually, yes. But therein lies the point — if American workers are facing unjust wage discrimination, [there] should be more lawsuits. Those are worthwhile lawsuits, challenging an injustice. Ideally, employers would stop discriminating, and in turn, there’d be fewer lawsuits. It’s about creating an incentive.

To me, the legislation makes sense. As a new hire, it’s nearly impossible to have any idea of what your colleagues are making. A hundred and eighty days is a narrow window, likely too narrow for anyone to make a determination about their place in the pay hierarchy. But by declaring each instance of the discrimination — that is, each paycheck — a separate offense, we open avenues to discover these injustices.

So what’s McCain’s message to women? “They need the education and training, particularly since more and more women are heads of their households, as much or more than anybody else.” More education? Really?

A quarter-century after women became the majority on college campuses, men are trailing them in more than just enrollment.

Department of Education statistics show that men, whatever their race or socioeconomic group, are less likely than women to get bachelor’s degrees — and among those who do, fewer complete their degrees in four or five years. Men also get worse grades than women.

And in two national studies, college men reported that they studied less and socialized more than their female classmates.

Small wonder, then, that at elite institutions like Harvard, small liberal arts colleges like Dickinson, huge public universities like the University of Wisconsin and U.C.L.A. and smaller ones like Florida Atlantic University, women are walking off with a disproportionate share of the honors degrees.

It is not that men are in a downward spiral: they are going to college in greater numbers and are more likely to graduate than two decades ago.

…

“The boys are about where they were 30 years ago, but the girls are just on a tear, doing much, much better,” said Tom Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education in Washington.

So it appears that women are getting that education, and to a greater degree than men. It seems that Mr. McCain is just a wee out of touch on issues of gender. You can add that to his current list of inadequacies, which includes the economy and foreign policy.

Kennedy delivered apt parting words: “This issue isn’t going away.” Nor should it. It’s actually sad that in a country where “[w]e hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” that we’re constantly debating issues of equality. Our ideals hold that we shouldn’t need legislation to determine that women deserve equal pay. Yet experience shows that we do.