Providing for Consideration of H.R. 650, Preserving Access to Manufactured Housing Act of 2015, Providing for Consideration of H.R. 685, Mortgage Choice Act of 2015, and Providing for Adoption of S. Con. Res. 11, Concurrent Resolution on the Budget, Fiscal Year 2016

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

In honor of Equal Pay Day, if we defeat the previous question, which I will ask Members to vote ``no'' on, we will offer an amendment to the rule that will allow the House to consider the Paycheck Fairness Act.

In this day and age, it is an outrage that women in the United States still make less compared to men for the same work. This bill will help close that pay gap, empower women, and ensure that they get the respect and the compensation that they deserve.

When we talk about paycheck fairness, Mr. Speaker, we also should remember that this is not just a women's issue; it is a family issue. Families increasingly rely on women's wages to make ends meet, and with less take-home pay, women have less for the everyday needs of their families, from groceries to rent to child care to doctors' visits.

This is discrimination that exists in the United States of America, and we in this Chamber have an opportunity to end it.

We cannot get the Republicans in this House to allow us to have an up-or-down, clean vote on this, so this is the only means available to us. At least have a debate on the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Massachusetts (Ms. Clark).

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. McGOVERN. Again, I will remind my colleagues that if we could defeat the previous question, we will bring up the Paycheck Fairness Act. It has been somewhat of a puzzlement to me that it has been so difficult, in this Republican-controlled House, to bring up legislation that would outlaw and end discrimination against women, and that is what this is.

When a woman is working at the same job a man is and getting paid less for that same work, that is discrimination, and there is no way around that fact. And we have the opportunity, in this House, and in the Senate, to end it.

But yet we can't get this bill to the floor for the kind of up-or-down, clean vote that we have been looking for for now quite a long time.

As I mentioned, Mr. Speaker, this is not just a women's issue; it is a family issue. We are all talking about how this economy is not recovering as fast as we would like it to. We all like to talk about how we wish that people would earn a little bit more in their paychecks.

Well, here is one way to do it. Make sure women get paid what they deserve, what they have earned. This should not be a controversial issue. This should not be something that requires that we can't get a vote on the floor.

So we are now kind of relying on this procedural motion, by defeating the previous question, to try to at least get a debate on this and to try to get at least some people on record as saying we ought to have an up-or-down vote on this.

As far as the underlying bill is concerned, Mr. Speaker, the underlying bill that we are considering here today, again, I would urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this rule because it is a closed rule, and they are two bills that would undermine the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation.

Let me remind my colleagues why we have the Dodd-Frank legislation to begin with, and that is because we saw what the excesses of some in the financial industry had done. Our economy almost was ruined because of those excesses, and consumer rights were routinely trampled on.

So we passed, in my opinion, a moderate and sensible kind of check on some of these financial institutions--that is the Dodd-Frank legislation. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and again, it is a puzzlement to me, have spent almost every waking moment that they have trying to undo that, trying to take away protections for consumers, trying to take away protections for small businesses, for homeowners. It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense at all.

So, Mr. Speaker, again I would urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question, and I would urge them to vote ``no'' on this closed rule.

Again, just to make this point crystal clear, the Equal Pay Act that we are talking about is nothing more than an attempt to end what continues to be a discriminatory practice in the United States. Nobody should be defending a practice that allows women to get paid less than men for doing the same job. That is discrimination, pure and simple, and we ought to bring that to an end.

So I would urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question and ``no'' on the rule.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, let me, first of all, thank the chairman of the Rules Committee for his courtesy and generosity in allowing two of my colleagues who feel very strongly about these issues to have an opportunity to speak. I am very, very grateful. So, as a reward, I am not going to say anything else other than to urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question and vote ``no'' on the rule.

I yield back the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source