Paycheck Fairness Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. NADLER. Madam Chair, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Speaker, in 1963, when the Equal Pay Act was signed into law, women earned 59 cents on the dollar compared to men.

In the 56 years since, that gap has only closed by 21 cents. Women still make only 80 cents on the dollar compared to their male counterparts and earn less than men in nearly every single occupation.

The pay gap is even more extreme for women of color. Over the course of an entire career, that gap results in women losing millions of dollars in earnings compared to their male counterparts.

In today's economy, in which women make up more than half of the workforce and are the sole or co-breadwinner in half of American families, that is simply unacceptable.

Being paid fairly for your work is a fundamental issue of fairness and freedom. Pay disparity can limit women's career choices and their financial independence, but equal pay enables women to save for retirement, to build careers, to buy homes, and to support their families.

Today, I am proud to vote for the Paycheck Fairness Act, legislation I have cosponsored in every Congress since 1997.

This legislation gets us closer, at last, to fulfilling the promise of equal pay for equal work and finally ensuring that women have the ability to fight back against wage discrimination and close the wage gap.

I wish to thank Chairman Scott for including language in this bill that mirrors legislation I introduced with Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton to address how employers use salary history.

Many women and minorities start their careers with unfair and artificially low salaries compared to their White male counterparts. That discrepancy can be compounded from job to job, when employers rely heavily on salary history in compensation packages.

This change will help ensure that women's pay is based on their merit and not on the past discrimination of other employers.

Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to support this bill and to finish the work of closing the wage gap.

Ms. FOXX of North Carolina. Madam Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Chair, I have worked for most of my life. I entered the workforce as a young woman, not because I wanted to but because I had to. I knew the burden of poverty well. If I didn't work to support myself, if I didn't contribute to my family income, we would go hungry.

Well, I have been enormously blessed to have gone from working for survival to working for pleasure and, I hope, a greater purpose. I know there are millions of women of all ages in this country today who must work to survive, just as I did.

When I entered the workforce, equal pay for equal work--equal pay for women--was a demand, but not yet the law. Today, it is the law. The Equal Pay Act and the Civil Rights Act are clear that pay discrimination is wrong, it is unacceptable, and it is illegal.

Managers who discriminate on the basis of sex are breaking at least two Federal laws, and they have no excuses.

No one should operate under the assumption that women have reached their full potential in the workplace.

Over the years, I have experienced sexism and misogyny. I have seen unfairness. I have seen, also, remarkable advancement, and I have remained disappointed in many ways.

So, for the sake of all the working women I have known and know now, women who work because they choose to and women who work because they must, I looked for anything in this legislation worthy of their support. I found that this bill wasn't written for their sake at all.

This bill is a cynical political ploy that borders on paternalism. There is not a single new or strengthened legal protection against pay discrimination for working women in H.R. 7.

This bill is entirely designed for trial lawyers, and Democrats must think women are too dumb to understand what they have done.

It is an insult to women everywhere that Democrats are passing this bill off as something good for them. This bill is like every other cheap product in drugstores and supermarkets across America that has been covered in pink packaging, marketed as the solution women have been waiting for, and sold for twice what it is worth.

We know women are smarter than that. Democrats, who have assumed that women will always follow their agenda, realize they are running out of time, and that is why they have stooped to a stunt like H.R. 7.

Women in America are embracing their power and potential in ways they never have before. I am not talking about the record number of women in Congress. I am talking about the historic, groundbreaking number of women in the workforce.

More than half of the record number of new jobs created in the past year have gone to women. More women are stepping up to start and lead businesses, to be job creators themselves, than ever before.

Women need Representatives in Washington who will cheer for them, not their rich lawyers. If Democrats want to champion a bill to make life easier for trial lawyers, that is their choice, but they should be honest about it and, for once, bypass the opportunity to talk down to hardworking women everywhere.

For the women who work today because they must, I am glad they have the legal protections I didn't when I was in their shoes. It was women like them who paved the way for suffrage a century ago. It was women like them who made equal pay for equal work the law of the land, and it is women like them, today and tomorrow, who will continue to clarify, to sharpen, and to exemplify what ``a more perfect Union'' was always supposed to look like. This House should follow their lead.

Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

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