Paycheck Fairness Act - Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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I rise to speak about the importance of closing the pay gap for women. I am a cosponsor of the Paycheck Fairness Act--an important bill--and I am so honored to be here with my colleagues and the leader of the women in the Senate, Senator Mikulski.

Today is Equal Pay Day, but it also marks the week where things are finally warming up in my State after a long deep-freeze. We look as though we are going to have 70 degrees. The snow will melt, the flowers will bloom, and the message we are all here to bring is it is time to stop freezing the women of America out of this economy. The women of America want to be treated fairly.

Now all the work we are doing--whether it is the minimum wage bill or the unemployment compensation--is stuck somewhere in a deep freezer over in the House of Representatives, somewhere between the frozen peas and the chocolate ice cream, and it is time to thaw out the freezer in Washington, DC, and help the women of America. That is what this bill is about, that is what the minimum wage bill is about. People deserve a fair shot at the American dream.

I thank again Senator Mikulski and I thank her for her leadership in the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. In 2009 we passed that bill to make sure that workers who face pay discrimination based on gender, race, age, religion, disability, or national origin have access to the courts. In doing so, we restored the original intent of the Civil Rights Act and the Equal Pay Act. Now it is time to prevent that pay discrimination from happening in the first place.

We all know women have made great strides in this economy. We have made great strides in this body. We now have 20 women in the Senate but, of course, we are still only at 20 percent. The Fortune 500 now has 23 women CEOs, but I still think anyone who looks at this knows there are great strides that have been made but great progress ahead.

Despite all this progress, women in this country still only earn close to 80 cents for every $1 made by men. This pay gap has real consequences for American families. Two-thirds of today's families rely on a mother's income either in part or in entirety, and in more than one-third of families the mother is the main breadwinner.

As Senate chair of the Joint Economic Committee, we released a report this week that shows lower wages impact women all through their working lives. I think that is something people don't always think about, the fact that if women consistently make less money, and then you retire, and you are actually going to live longer than men, you have a lot less money to retire with in the first place.

In fact, women who retire have about $11,000 less per year than men. That is very significant when you look at the age range where women will be in retirement.

The other piece we don't always think about--unless you are in their position--is women in the sandwich generation, women who are taking care of aging parents at the same time they are taking care of children. That is happening every single day in this country as women are having to take leave from work or leave their job to take care of an aging parent while they are still struggling to afford to send their kids to college, to send their kids to daycare.

This legislation will build on the promises of the Equal Pay Act and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. It will give women new tools and protections to guard against pay discrimination and will help reaffirm that basic principle that all women deserve equal pay for equal work.

I am hopeful we can get this done for the people of this country. It was the late Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota who said: ``We all do better when we all do better.'' I still believe that is true, and so do my colleagues who join me today.

We need to focus on this bill. We need to unfreeze some old beliefs, and we need to bring a little Spring into the Senate.

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