Budget and Accounting Transparency Act of 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, this is a final amendment to the bill. It will not kill the bill or send it back to committee. If adopted, the bill will immediately proceed to final passage, as amended.

This amendment works to end pay discrimination against women, and it helps to ensure a very simple principle, one I hope that everyone in this body agrees with: men, women, same job, same pay, because it is true in this body.

Tomorrow is the dubious milestone of Equal Pay Day, the day a women's earnings catch up to what a man made last year. We are now over 3 full months into 2014. Women should not have to work an extra quarter of a year to be paid what they are due.

My amendment would postpone the effective date of the bill under consideration until Congress has worked to close this pay gap. It also ensures that this act does not increase the cost of loan and credit programs for small businesses, students, farmers, and veterans as a result of an elimination or reduction of Federal support.

Paycheck discrimination is not a partisan issue. It affects every women. It affects every family in America. Nearly 60 years ago, a Republican President, Dwight Eisenhower, told the Congress that ``legislation to apply the principle of equal pay for equal work without discrimination because of sex is a matter of simple justice.''

Over 50 years ago, Congress came together in a bipartisan fashion to pass the Equal Pay Act and end what President Kennedy called ``the serious and endemic problem of unequal wages.''

In 2014, women are still making 77 cents on average for every dollar made by a man. This wage gap is only closing at a rate of less than one-half a cent a year. That means we still have 40 more years before women will get paid what they deserve for the same work.

Families cannot afford to wait that long. They should not have to. That is why we just saw the Republican-controlled Senate in New Hampshire pass a paycheck fairness bill unanimously because this is an issue of simple fairness--same job, same pay--that affects everyone.

Women are half the workforce in America today, two-thirds of the primary cobreadwinners in American families. The poverty rate among women is as high as it has been in 17 years. Women have less retirement security, less protection on their pension, and more reliance on Social Security, but they receive lower payments because of this continuing wage gap.

As a result, two-thirds of seniors living in poverty today in the United States of America are women. These disproportionate financial pressures that women are facing are very much a product of this wage gap.

According to the National Partnership for Women and Families, women lose $11,000 in income every year as a result of pay discrimination. This pay gap has not budged in a decade. For women of color, it is even worse. African American women make only 62 cents as compared to the average White male; Hispanic women, only 54 cents.

The pay gap holds true across occupations and education levels. This is not just a problem for women. Less pay for women means less income. That affects an entire family. Two-income households are already struggling.

This is not a partisan issue. Unequal pay affects families all across our country. What are they trying to do? Pay their bills, achieve the American Dream, and they are getting less take-home pay for their hard work.

We have heard it from AnnMarie DuChon in Massachusetts. She found out years into her job that the university she worked for was paying men more for the same work.

Terri Kelly in Tennessee only discovered she was making less than she deserved because her husband held the exact same job, and she saw his paycheck.

ReShonda Young of Iowa discovered that her own father was paying women less when she went to work in the family business. This is real.

Both Republicans and Democrats agree that people doing the same job should receive the same pay. This amendment reaffirms our commitment to this basic principle.

It also says that we are not going to force small businesses and consumers, who are working hard, playing by the rules, and trying to make a better future for themselves, to pay more because of their skill.

Mr. Speaker, we made an enormous difference for women and families when we passed the Affordable Care Act in March 2010. We said to insurance companies: you cannot charge women more than men.

That is the law of the land today. It is real, it is being implemented, and it is happening right now. Now, we should build on that.

Let us make sure that employers cannot pay women less for the same job. This makes all the difference in their lives and the lives of their families. I urge all of my colleagues to support this amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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