Concurrent Resolution On The Budget, Fiscal Year 2016 -- Continued

Floor Speech

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Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I want to thank Senator Mikulski for offering this really important amendment because I believe that real, long-term economic growth is built from the middle out, not from the top down. Our government and our economy should be working for all families, not just the wealthiest few.

We in Congress need to be focused on raising wages and expanding economic security and making sure our workers have the opportunity to work hard and succeed. That is exactly what the amendment the Senator from Maryland has offered will do.

It would build on the promise of the Equal Pay Act to help close the pay gap between men and women. Today, nearly half of our workforce is not earning equal pay for equal work. In fact, women across the country, as we know, get paid just 78 cents for every $1 a man makes for the same work. That is not just unfair to women, it hurts our families and it hurts our economy and we need to fix it.

Last year, at a hearing in the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, we heard from a woman named Kerri. For 5 years, Kerri worked for an auto supplier as a supervisor. She liked her job. She did it well. Her boss gave her glowing performance reviews for her work. But when that auto industry ran into trouble, her company had to file for bankruptcy, and it was through those bankruptcy court reports that Kerri found out she was making significantly less than the men she supervised.

After all those years of hard work, she found out her employer valued her work less just because she was a woman. She said she was heartbroken and embarrassed, but more than that, she told our committee last year that those years of lost wages affected her family for the rest of her life. And she is not alone.

Across the country, pay discrimination hurts women and families' ability to make ends meet and get ahead in the workplace.

I thank the Senator from Maryland for her extraordinary leadership in the fight for equal pay and for bringing this important amendment forward today. This amendment will help move us toward an economy where women get a fair shot at pay equity in the workplace and set us up to tackle pay discrimination head-on.

Pay discrimination, by the way, is not just unfair to women, it is bad for our families, and it is a real and persistent problem that hurts our economy.

It is important to remember that women's roles in our economy has shifted dramatically in the last few decades. Women now make up nearly half of our workforce. Today, 60 percent of families rely on earnings from both parents--up from 37 percent in 1975. More than ever, today women are likely to be the primary breadwinners in their family.

So we have to make sure working women can succeed in today's economy because their success is critical to families' economic security and to our Nation's economy as a whole.

According to a recent report, closing the pay gap between men and women would add $446 billion to our economy. I hope we can all agree that in the 21st century workers should be paid fairly for the work they do regardless of their gender, and I hope we can agree we need to expand economic security for more families. That should be our mission to move our country forward.

This amendment supports the basic principle of fairness in the workplace. It would help women, families, and our Nation's economy.

I want to make this clear: I am urging my colleagues to vote for the Mikulski amendment--the only proposal on the table right now that would move us toward a real solution to this problem.

Senator Mikulski has been our leader on this issue. I hope Republicans will join Democrats on real solutions and work with us to create jobs, increase wages, and expand economic security that benefits all workers and families, not just the wealthiest few.

I yield the floor.

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