Paycheck Fairness Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. DeLAURO. Madam Chair, I rise in support of H.R. 7, the Paycheck Fairness Act.

It is a historic day on the House of Representatives floor, and we are going to pass paycheck fairness, equal pay for equal work, in this United States of America.

Madam Chair, I thank the chairman of the Education and Labor Committee for getting this bill through the committee and onto the floor today. We have waited 8 years to be able to vote on this issue.

The United States Congress has a rich history of making a difference in the lives of the American people: Social Security, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the GI Bill, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act, to name but a few.

Today, we can make a difference for working women and their families. Today, we can address the biggest economic challenge of our time, that Americans are in jobs that do not pay them enough to live on. We can address their economic struggle. And, yes, this is a bill that the majority is passing today to address that economic need for families.

I cannot tell you how difficult it has been to break through on something so simple: Men and women in the same job deserve the same pay. But now, the issue and the environment have collided. Equal pay is at the center of our public discourse, and paycheck fairness is ready for passage today.

A bipartisan bill supported by every member of the Democratic Caucus, the Paycheck Fairness Act toughens remedies in the Equal Pay Act of 1963 to give America's working women the opportunity to fight wage discrimination and to receive the paycheck that they have earned.

Under existing law, damages are too insubstantial to provide women with full restitution or provide bad-acting companies a meaningful deterrent.

Paycheck fairness puts gender-based discrimination sanctions on equal footing with other forms of wage discrimination by allowing women to sue for compensatory and punitive damages. It better protects employees from being fired for sharing their salary with coworkers. It establishes a grant program to provide salary negotiation training for girls and for women. It ensures that employers are not reliant on wage history when they hire an employee.

Over 60 years ago, after Republican President Dwight Eisenhower called for equal pay legislation during his 1956 State of the Union Address on the floor of this House, and more than 55 years after President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act, pay discrimination is very much still a reality in our country. In 2017, there were almost 26,000 charges of unlawful, sex-based pay discrimination filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and 996 Equal Pay Act charges.

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Ms. DeLAURO. Women continue to earn 20 percent less than men, on average, according to Census data. Women earn less regardless of the choices they make in their career or education. Across industries, whether you are a financial manager, a registered nurse, a schoolteacher, or an executive, a pay gap exists between men and women.

Ten years ago, we passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. It reopened the courtroom door but did not address the underlying issue at hand today.

We have an opportunity to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. It is a matter of right and wrong. Discrimination is unacceptable, and we are all diminished when we fall short.

President Kennedy said, when he signed the Equal Pay Act, that this would ``add to our laws another structure basic to democracy'' and ``affirm our determination that when women enter the labor force, they will find equality in their pay envelope.''

We can do this today on the floor of this House. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to vote for the Paycheck Fairness Act and make sure that we guarantee equal pay for equal work.

Ms. FOXX of North Carolina. Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Missouri (Mrs. Hartzler), my distinguished colleague.

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