B and B

Now is the time for the Paycheck Fairness Act

The Paycheck Fairness Act may come up for a vote in the U.S. Senate today.  This is a critical piece of legislation that addresses several shortfalls in current laws against unequal pay for women.  We know from personal experience that these shoftfalls need to be addressed before we can hope to achieve the decades-old goal of equal pay.

Terrel McSweeny writes at whitehouse.gov:

Wage discrimination is real.

Just ask Lilly Ledbetter.  She is a mother.  She didn’t seek a “less stressful work environment” than her male counter parts.  And she was paid roughly 30% less.   If she had been allowed to share information about her pay with her colleagues she would have realized she was being paid less than men with less experience.

But Lilly couldn’t bring that case.  She could have lost her job if she discussed her pay with her colleagues.  The Paycheck Fairness Act would provide that protection. The author [of a Wall Street Journal op-ed] is right there are a lot of laws aimed at this problem – but because they don’t provide basic tools like pay transparency, discrimination persists.

Also see Carol Rose at boston.com:

Lawmakers meant for The Equal Pay Act of 1963 to ensure equal pay for equal work, but over time, because of weak remedies and loopholes in the law, significant disparities in pay persist.

The Paycheck Fairness Act would give employees the legal tools they need to finally close the wage gap by, for example, requiring employers to demonstrate that wage differences between men and women doing the same work have a business justification; prohibiting retaliation against workers who inquire about their wages; and leveling the playing field by ensuring that women can obtain the same remedies as those subject to employment discrimination based on their race or national origin. The bill would also provide technical assistance to employers and provide important safeguards for small businesses.

The Paycheck Fairness Act already passed the U.S. House of Representatives with bipartisan support and now has 40 co-sponsors in the Senate—more than it has ever had in any previous Congress. Recently, a report from the White House National Economic Council underscored the need for the Paycheck Fairness Act as an important step towards the economic security of women and our nation’s families.

If we want the tools to eliminate pay discrimination against women, it is time to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Three months later... Health insurance reform imminent?

In the three months since my last post on this matter, the push for health care reform has gone through many ups and downs.  But now it does really seem to be on the verge of a final vote.  Time to push it over the top, for if it goes down, we won't have another chance for a very long time.

Misleading headline of the day

New York Times headline today:

By Slim Margin, Senate Advances Stimulus Bill

A more accurate description:

Senate Advances Stimulus Bill 61 to 36

"Slim-margin" is of course referring to the Senate rules that allow any 40 Senators to block legislation.  But anywhere else a 61 to 36 margin would be considered decisive -- even perhaps a "landslide".

After 15 years, Congress returns to the job of protecting our public lands

I wasn't able to pay it much attention at the time due to all the excitement surrounding Obama's inauguration and the major concern over our economic downturn, but about ten days ago, the Senate passed a measure that purports to protect large areas of federal lands in numerous states. 

According to at least one news article (from ENN), it provides "the largest expansion of the National Wilderness Preservation System in 15 years."  The one 15 years ago must be the California Desert Protection Act, passed in October 1994 as one of the last acts of the Democratic-controlled Congress.  The Gingrich/DeLay GOP, and their antipathy to the very concept of land that belongs to everyone in the country, took over Congress a few weeks later.

Virtually ever since then, we've had to play defense in public lands protection, including numerous fights over preventing the Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress from selling off our lands to developers and other special interests.  It is nice to be on the offensive again.

Ledbetter Fair Pay Act passes Senate

Excellent news.  From The Hill:

The Senate on Thursday flexed its bolstered Democratic majority and passed an equal pay measure that Republicans blocked last year. The bill could be the first measure signed into law by President Obama.

Senators voted 61-36 for the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, after a day of beating back eight GOP amendments by decisive margins.

“We have now overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan bill to correct an injustice that has been prevailing,” said Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), who led the floor debate on the bill.

All four female GOP senators crossed over to support the Democratic measure: Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas; Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine; and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) also approved the legislation.

Every voting Democrat backed the bill.

Yesterday, Congress took a large step towards helping enforce fair pay for women

The Lilly Ledbetter Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act both passed the House resoundingly on Friday.  Unfortunately, the vast, vast majority of Republicans remain adamantly opposed to recognizing the problems with workplace discrimination that these bills are meant to address. 

Also, I've noticed a misleading representation of the Ledbetter Act being passed around, either by lazy journalists (NPR) or by conservative propagandists (CEI).  These people suggest that this act is meant to extend or abolish the status of limitations on filing discrimination lawsuits.  This is completely false.

For an accurate, short description of the Act, see this AP article by Jim Abrams from yesterday:

The Lilly Ledbetter Act would reverse a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that a worker must file claims of wage discrimination within 180 days of the first decision to pay that worker less, even if the person was unaware of the pay disparity.

The 180-day limit, for better or worse, is untouched by the Ledbetter Act.  But it will apply to the time since the issuance of the last discriminatory paycheck, as it had in legal interpretation for decades -- until 2007.

Later in the AP article, Rep. Rob Andrews of New Jersey concisely summarizes the impact of that Supreme Court Ruling and the situation that the Ledbetter Act is meant to rectify:

"It should not become the law of the land that if you are an employer and can hide discrimination for 180 days you can get away with it."

For more on these bills, which now await action in the Senate, see the National Committee on Pay Equity.

New Congress will quickly take up the Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act

One of the first acts to be taken up by the new Congress should be the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act.  Hopefully this time, thanks to the GOP's numerous defeats in the recent elections, it won't be filibustered to death by the Senate Republicans.

From the NY Times on Monday:

President-elect Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress are planning swift action to overturn a Supreme Court decision that made it much harder for people to challenge discrimination in employment, education, housing and other fields.

...

The decision, involving a woman named Lilly M. Ledbetter, who had accused her employer of sex-based pay discrimination, was issued in May 2007. Since then, courts around the country have gone far beyond the facts of that case and cited it as a reason for rejecting lawsuits claiming discrimination based on race, sex, age and disability.In some cases, after initially ruling for employees, judges have reversed themselves and ruled in favor of employers. The judges said they had to switch because of the Supreme Court decision.

Ledbetter Fair Pay Act still in limbo

While we were traveling last week, we missed this news of a rally in support of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.  From Womenstake:

As the rally commenced, one by one the Congresswomen spoke to the crowd and explained why the passage of this Act is integral to closing the wage gap and guaranteeing pay equity. Following Senator Hillary Clinton’s address, Lilly Ledbetter shared her own story and gave a face to the unfortunate reality of pay discrimination. As the rally came to a close, the Congresswomen urged the crowd to contact their Senators and demand that they support this Act and demonstrate their commitment to equality.

Kay Steiger at RH Reality Check has more:

"My struggle today is about timing," Letbetter [sic] said when it was her turn to speak, "at least, on the surface." Women who lack the power to contest pay discrimination in court -- and many do because they discover their pay discrimination long after the legal six-month filing period has expired -- end up earning less over a lifetime. As Ledbetter noted, to this day it affects her pension and social security payments. "The only bill that would fix the problem created by the court is the Paycheck Fairness Act," Ledbetter said.

Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act

Here is a bill I've been keeping a close eye on for nearly a year:

Under a measure sponsored by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, the court’s ruling that Ms. [Lilly] Ledbetter [of Alabama] failed to file a timely challenge to pay practices at a Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. plant in Gadsden would effectively be overturned, though Ms. Ledbetter would not benefit directly.

Ms. Ledbetter, who earned thousands of dollars less than male colleagues doing similar supervisory work, was found by the court to have failed to make her claim within 180 days of the company’s pay policy decision. The sponsors of the bill want to clear up that requirement and straighten out what they see as a flawed ruling.

“Never mind that Ms. Ledbetter didn’t know about the discrimination when it first began,” Mr. Kennedy said. “Never mind that she had no means to learn of the discrimination because Goodyear kept salary information confidential. Never mind that Goodyear’s discrimination against Ms. Ledbetter continued each and every time it gave her a smaller paycheck than it gave her male colleagues.”

The House passed a similar bill last year soon after the court decision, but its backers have encountered resistance in the Senate and from the Bush administration, which argues it could spark a wave of lawsuits. Some Senate Republicans have reservations about the measure, but they intend to be careful in their opposition to avoid being portrayed as backing pay discrimination.

New corporate giveaway under guise of "fixing" the mortgage crisis

I am of mixed opinions of how or even whether to assist people and banks that got involved in the overinflated housing market over the last few years.  But one thing I am clear about is that giving out billions of dollars of taxpayers' money to the housing industry that reaped in mega-profits during those years is profoundly wrong.

Daniel Gross wrote in Slate last Monday (emphasis added):

The proposed tax break [now passed by the Senate] is hard to justify for several reasons. It does nothing for slow and steady companies that keep their heads and simply rack up profits year after year—and pay their taxes accordingly. Rather, it rewards the most reckless participants in the bubble. If you borrowed a ton of money to build spec houses in Miami and reported $2 billion in profits between 2002 and 2007 but gave up all those profits by notching a $2 billion loss this year, the extended carryback has a great deal of value. If you've been building affordable housing in Wichita, Kan., and booked $300 million in profits in those years, and then, through careful management of costs, managed to eke out a $5 million profit this year, it has no value. The big public homebuilders, whose shares rallied on the news of this potential tax break, didn't pay any windfall taxes on the bubble-era earnings. Why should they get an extraordinary post-bubble windfall?

Homebuilders argue that they need relief because their sector, which provides a great deal of domestic employment, is on the ropes, and they're finding it more difficult to raise capital. Which is as it should be. After bubbles pop, those who screwed up really badly fail and get taken over by creditors or opportunistic investors. Those who have sound underlying franchises but merely got a little carried away can survive if they take painful restructuring moves. This is what is known as market capitalism. For all the talk of a credit crunch, capital is still available—it's just not available on the easy terms managers had come to expect during the late Greenspan years. Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, and plenty of other firms tied to the mortgage/finance complex have taken steps to shore up their balance sheets and replenish lost capital. But investors, having been burned, demand more downside protection and better guaranteed returns. Thornburg Mortgage was forced to pay 18 percent interest for an emergency round of capital raising that allowed it to stave off bankruptcy. This is also what is known as market capitalism.

...

The proposal to give new tax breaks to homebuilders and banks is yet another example of the pernicious trend of privatizing profit and socializing losses, which is gnawing away at faith in the system. Dilute the shareholders, not the taxpayers.

Thankfully, the House of Representatives may take a far more sensible route, according to the Washington Post (emphasis added):

On Wednesday, the House Ways and Means Committee approved an $11 billion tax package that rejects help for home builders and offers a $7,500 tax credit to first-time home buyers rather than buyers of foreclosed properties.

Please keep paying attention so that we all do not get swindled in the end.