[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Pages 8202-8206]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                PAYCHECK FAIRNESS ACT--MOTION TO PROCEED

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I move to proceed to Calendar No. 410, S. 
3220.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will report.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

       Motion to proceed to S. 3220, a bill to amend the Fair 
     Labor Standards Act of 1938 to provide more effective 
     remedies to victims of discrimination in the payment of wages 
     on the basis of sex, and for other purposes.

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, we are now on the motion to proceed to this 
measure called the Paycheck Fairness Act. At 5 p.m. this afternoon the 
Senate will proceed to executive session to consider the nomination of 
Timothy Hillman to be U.S. District Judge for Massachusetts. There will 
be 30 minutes of debate at that time led by Senator Leahy. At 5:30 
p.m., there will be a rollcall vote on confirmation of the Hillman 
nomination.


                    Measure Placed on the Calendar--
                              S.J. Res. 41

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, S.J. Res. 41 is at the desk and now due for 
a second reading.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will read the joint 
resolution by title for the second time.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

       A joint resolution (S.J. Res. 41) expressing the sense of 
     Congress regarding the nuclear program of the Government of 
     the Islamic Republic of Iran.

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I would object to any further proceedings 
with respect to this joint resolution.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Objection having been heard, the 
bill will be placed on the calendar.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, back in 1963, when Congress passed the Equal 
Pay Act, women at that time were working year-round and took home about 
59 cents for every dollar paid to their male coworkers doing the same 
job. While passage of that landmark legislation helped narrow the pay 
gap, today American women still only take home 77 cents on the dollar 
compared to their male colleagues for doing the exact same job.
  Jane, who works in a job, gets 77 cents, while Jack, who also works 
at that job, gets $1. That is why women are concerned about how they 
are being treated. It is simply not fair that any woman working the 
same hours at the same job should make less money.
  Often these inequities stretch over decades, and many women don't 
even know they are victims. It took one Las Vegas woman 15 years to 
find out she made $20,000 per year less than her male colleagues 
although she did the same work and worked just as hard. That is $20,000 
a year over 15 years. She was paid about 66 cents on the dollar 
compared to her male coworkers despite being a top sales associate with 
a Las Vegas payroll company.
  Over the decade and a half she worked there, her employers cheated 
her out of literally hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of pay. 
Why? Because she is a woman. Her story, though, has a happy ending. She 
got a lawyer, settled out of court, and has now gone on with her own 
successful business.
  But many victims don't have that happy ending. Many victims of years 
or even decades of gender-based pay discrimination have nothing to be 
happy about. The average woman who works full time, year-round in 
Nevada makes $7,300 less than a man doing the same job. I am sure, Mr. 
President, it is about the same in Connecticut.
  Although the wage gap has narrowed in the last half century since 
Congress declared women are entitled to equal pay for equal work, 
gender discrimination remains a serious problem in the workplace. That 
is why Democrats overcame the Republican obstructionism last Congress 
to pass the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. It was the second thing we 
did in a very productive Congress.
  Why did we do it? Lilly Ledbetter had worked for years and years 
doing the same job as her male counterparts until she finally found out 
one day they were being paid a lot more money than she was for doing 
the same work. So she went to court. The court said the statute of 
limitations had run out.
  The Presiding Officer is one of the most gifted lawyers we have in 
the Senate. He was a long-time attorney general in the State of 
Connecticut and understands the law very well. Lilly Ledbetter's case 
was so unfair because she didn't bring her case soon enough. She didn't 
know she was being cheated. They said people have a certain period of 
time to bring up this matter--I think it was 3 years. Even though it 
had been well more than a decade she had been working there, she was 
out of luck.
  So we passed the Lilly Ledbetter Pay Act. I met her on a number of 
occasions and, boy, she has a lot of spunk in

[[Page 8203]]

her. And rightfully so because a lot of people would not have fought. 
She took her case to the U.S. Supreme Court and she lost there. That is 
why we had to do something legislatively.
  This law, the Lilly Ledbetter legislation, makes it possible for 
victims of gender discrimination to successfully challenge unequal pay 
even if the indiscretion has been going on for years.
  Despite that achievement in the last Congress, there is a great deal 
of work to be done to ensure that American women earn comparable pay 
for a day's work. It is crucial that we pass the bill that is now 
before this body, the Paycheck Fairness Act. It is common sense. It 
would give workers stronger tools to combat wage discrimination, bar 
retaliation against workers for discussing salary information, and help 
ensure more adequate compensation for victims with gender-based pay 
discrimination.
  I am fortunate that I have five children. My oldest is my daughter. 
She was a good student and a wonderful daughter. No one could be a 
better daughter than my daughter Lana. She graduated from college, and 
she came to Washington to spend some time with her parents before she 
decided what she wanted to do permanently. She went around looking for 
a job on Capitol Hill.
  The first question every person she interviewed with asked was, Do 
you type? Can you imagine that? She could type. How do you start a 
debate with that? They asked her that because she is a woman. Women get 
an unfair shake in modern-day America, and we are trying to do 
something about it.
  We want workers to have stronger tools to combat wage discrimination. 
We want to bar retaliation against workers for discussing salary 
information. Some people get fired because they have gone around and 
found out that a man working the same job as them makes a lot more 
money than they do. They get fired for just telling another employee 
what they made.
  We also want this paycheck fairness bill to pass because it would 
help ensure more adequate compensation for victims of gender-based pay 
discrimination. Today women make up nearly half of the workforce, and 
an increasing number of women are the primary wage earners for their 
families.
  When I went to law school in Washington--a good school, George 
Washington University--I can only recall one woman in our class. There 
may have been two or three, but I don't think so. Now over half the 
women in law schools in America are women. There is no reason that a 
woman graduating from law school should get paid less than a man 
graduating from law school when they are doing the same work.
  Today women make up nearly half of the workforce. As I said, an 
increasing number of women are the primary wage earners for the family. 
We can tell that by what is going on in college. More than half of the 
students in college are women. So this problem affects women, children, 
and families across the country. And it really does.
  With the economy struggling and families stretching every dollar, 
closing the pay gap is more important than ever. No woman working to 
support herself or her family should be paid less than a male 
counterpart. They are doing the same job, so they should be paid the 
same.
  Some employers have taken advantage of women, knowing they would work 
for less. It might be a single parent, and they have said: We don't 
have to pay her what we pay him. Now with all of this going on, with 
the examples I have given, the Republicans are filibustering this bill. 
They will not even let us vote on it. But what else is new? They have 
filibustered even what they agree with. They don't agree with this. 
They don't want women to make the same amount of money, so they are 
filibustering this bill--they are filibustering even letting us get on 
the bill. They are filibustering what is called a motion-to-proceed 
rule that I think needs to be changed in this body, and it will 
someday.
  They are filibustering the Paycheck Fairness Act. This legislation 
would help even the playing field for women in the workplace. If it 
seems unbelievable that the Republicans would block such a commonsense 
measure. Consider their track record in this Congress. Republicans have 
blocked legislation to hire more teachers, cops, firefighters, and 
first responders. They blocked that. They stalled important jobs 
measures such as the aviation bill. The FAA bill had 22 extensions. 
They finally got it done, but it was so hard. The FAA was closed down 
on one occasion for a week.
  The highway bill has been stalled for months. It is in conference 
now. They opposed legislation to restore basic fairness to our Tax 
Code. What does that mean? We agree with the American people. About 80 
percent of the American people believe someone who is making more than 
$1 million a year should pay more than somebody making $100,000 a year. 
But not our Republican friends. So they opposed legislation to restore 
basic fairness to our Tax Code. They twice derailed attempts to stop 
interest rates on student loans from doubling which put affordable 
education at risk for 7 million students.
  What I am saying is if we don't get something done by the end of this 
month, the interest on a large number of student loans--the so-called 
Stafford loans--will grow from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. It will 
double. They have stopped that twice.
  They put women's lives at risk by holding the Violence Against Women 
Act in limbo on a hypertechnical issue. When I say ``hypertechnical,'' 
I mean just that. They would not let us go to conference on what we had 
passed and done here because it had a tax measure in it. By Washington 
standards, almost no money, a few million dollars. I know that is a 
lot, but is it a reason to stop this bill? Of course not.
  They launched a series of attacks on women, their access to health 
care, and even contraception. They have amassed an impressive record of 
destruction, of being on the wrong side of almost every issue. 
Unfortunately, it seems that the Paycheck Fairness Act may have two 
strikes against it. No. 1, it will be good for women and good for the 
economy, so Republicans are going to oppose it. Paycheck fairness is 
right for the country, but it appears Republicans will wind up on the 
wrong side of this issue as well. They will send the message to little 
girls across the country that their work is less valuable because they 
happen to be born female.
  Little kids are so impressionistic. I hope everybody in this country 
saw the picture that appeared in major newspapers around the country 
last week.
  There is a man who served as a U.S. marine at the White House. It is 
an important job--helping to provide security to the White House. It is 
traditional for Democratic Presidents and Republican Presidents. When 
the marine finishes their tour, the President brings that person and 
their family into the Oval Office to say thanks and goodbye. Well, the 
man who came in and who is represented in these pictures had a wife and 
two children, including a cute little 5-year-old boy all dressed up 
with a tie. The President asked the boys if they had a question. The 5-
year-old had a big brother who was 9 or 10 years old. The little boy 
had a question, demonstrating the honesty of a 5-year-old.
  The President couldn't hear him the first time. He said: What did you 
say?
  The little boy said: Is your hair like mine?
  He is a little African-American boy.
  Is your hair like mine?
  I am sure this little boy--I don't know, but I am sure people had 
questioned his hair, and he wanted to know if the President of the 
United States had hair just like his.
  So the President leaned over and said: You can feel it.
  When he felt the President's hair, he said: It is just like mine.
  Doesn't that speak volumes about little children? That is what I am 
talking about. This little boy knew that even though his hair was 
different than everybody's hair whom he went to school with, he could 
be President just like the man whose hair he was able to feel.
  What I have said here today is that it appears Republicans wind up on 
the wrong side of this issue we have talked

[[Page 8204]]

about--paycheck fairness--sending the message to little girls across 
the country that their work is less valuable because they happen to be 
born female. I hope the Republicans will change. They are not going 
to--we all know that--but hope springs eternal.
  Will the Chair announce the business of the day.


                       Reservation of Leader Time

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the 
leadership time is reserved.
  Mr. REID. I note the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                   Recognition of the Minority Leader

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Republican leader is 
recognized.


                        Presidential Leadership

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I wish to start out this afternoon by 
calling attention to what appears to be a pretty serious disconnect 
over at the White House between the President's legislative advisers 
and his political team.
  For weeks, President Obama has been running around ginning up college 
students and late-night television audiences over an impending interest 
rate change on college loans, pointing the finger at Republicans. But 
not only are Republicans supportive of solving this problem, we are the 
only ones who actually passed legislation to do so. House Republicans 
passed a bill weeks ago that would have preserved current rates, and 
late last week Speaker Boehner, Leader Cantor, Senator Kyl, and I sent 
a joint letter to the President proposing multiple solutions to the 
problem that were thoughtfully and carefully designed to gain the 
President's support. In fact, the solutions were based on the 
President's own proposals.
  Let me say that again. We sent a letter to the President advocating 
continuing the current rate for another year and proposed pay-fors that 
he himself has endorsed. So one can imagine how surprised we were to 
see one of the President's political advisers say on one of the Sunday 
shows yesterday that Republicans in Congress are sitting on our hands 
and an op-ed this morning by the Education Secretary saying that 
Congress isn't lifting a finger to resolve the problem.
  So let's be very clear about all of this. Republicans in Congress are 
the only ones actually working to solve the student loan issue. Unless 
the President isn't having his mail forwarded to him on the campaign 
trail, he knows it as well as I do.
  I couldn't help but notice that the President is on a fundraising 
blitz in Manhattan today. No doubt it is easier to walk into these 
events when one has a good piece of fiction to sell about Republican 
obstructionism. But the President's campaign rhetoric is increasingly 
at odds with reality. On the student loan issue, at least, it is 
Republicans who have been working on a solution and the President who 
has been totally AWOL. All he has to do is pick up the phone and tell 
us which one of his own proposals he will accept. It is that easy. But 
the truth is that the President doesn't really want to solve this 
problem. He seems to prefer the talking point, as disingenuous as it 
is.
  Speaking of talking points, it has been suggested by some on the 
President's political team that Republicans are rooting for economic 
failure. That is absolutely preposterous. If Republicans wanted 
failure, we would support this President's misguided policies.
  But the larger point is this: We will never solve any of these 
problems we face while the President continues to put his need for 
campaign rhetoric ahead of finding bipartisan solutions. And whether it 
is pretending that small-ball, Post-it note-quality proposals would 
have a major impact on the economy or pretending that Republicans, who 
are the only ones actually working on bipartisan solutions, are somehow 
sitting on our hands, he is doing a major disservice to the American 
people.
  For the good of the country, it is time for the President to take yes 
for an answer. It is long past time for the President to lead.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                         Avoiding Sequestration

  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, today I would like to address some of the 
recent press chatter that attempts to paint Republicans as closet 
Keynesians because we oppose the massive defense cuts that are 
contained in the Budget Control Act--the automatic sequestration or 
across-the-board cuts that occur unless Congress acts to avoid that 
before the end of this year.
  The implication is that if we make economic arguments against these 
automatic cuts; namely, that they will result in massive job losses, we 
undercut our arguments against the President's stimulus spending, which 
is ostensibly created in order to stimulate consumer demand and 
therefore increase spending, which is supposed to get us out of the 
economic doldrums we are in. I wish to make two points in response.
  First, of course, eliminating more than 1 million defense-related 
jobs, which is what will happen if the automatic sequestration occurs, 
will obviously hurt the economy. It will obviously result in job 
losses, and many people will suffer. That is what a George Mason 
University study said this $492 billion in cuts will contribute to. In 
fact, the same point was made in a CBO study that was released a couple 
of weeks ago. How could such massive job losses not do economic harm? A 
million jobs--jobs in both the private and public sectors--comprise a 
substantial part of our economy. In fact, just in my State of Arizona, 
there are about 33,200 private-sector jobs at risk if these automatic 
defense cuts were to take place.
  But--and this is my second point--most Federal spending, certainly 
including defense spending, is for purposes other than stimulating the 
economy. I support spending for national security because it is 
necessary for the Nation, not because it also happens to provide jobs. 
And that is the way it is with a lot of Federal spending. We support 
the programs because they satisfy a need, and certainly the No. 1 need 
of those of us in the Congress and the President is to provide for the 
national defense. So we spend what we think is necessary each year to 
provide for the national defense. The fact that also can create some 
jobs is a side benefit, if you will, in an economic sense, but it is 
not the reason we do the spending in the first place. If that spending 
is cut way back, however, there is no question that jobs will be lost, 
and I think that is worth pointing out in the context of a discussion 
about economic recovery.
  What I would not do is support unnecessary spending on defense or 
anything else just to create more government-supported jobs, just for 
the sake of stimulating the economy. The taxpayers don't have enough 
money to contribute to the Federal Government for that purpose. We 
should spend what is necessary and no more. So supporting existing 
defense jobs is very different from supporting redistributionist 
government stimulus spending for jobs there is no demand for and on 
government payments for things such as food stamps and other transfer 
payments that don't necessarily translate to new jobs but simply move 
money around. The difference, really, is how you spend the money.
  Just to reiterate, Republicans support defense jobs because they 
produce something essential to our national security and the things 
they relate to--intelligence and making equipment

[[Page 8205]]

and weapons and so on. The jobs that produces are incidental to the 
primary reason we support those jobs.
  Keynesians support redistributionist government stimulus spending 
because they think government spending boosts jobs and economic growth 
by increasing consumer demand, as I said. But this zero-sum thinking 
may result in the redistribution of resources from one group of 
Americans to another but doesn't necessarily result in any net new 
production or economic growth.
  It is said, for example, that we could pay people to dig holes and 
then fill them up again and we would have created jobs but we wouldn't 
have created any productivity or growth for the economy per se. 
Unfortunately, very often the group left paying the bill is the very 
group of people we rely upon to create the new jobs--in this case, the 
taxpayers, especially small business folks, whom we call upon to create 
the jobs coming out of the recession. The real trade-off is between 
government jobs and jobs created in the private sector. Leaving more 
money with the job creators in the private sector enables them to 
create those jobs. Taking more of it away and sending it to Washington 
for Washington to redistribute takes away from job creation.
  As I have noted many times, the last 3-plus years have shown we can't 
spend our way to economic growth and prosperity; that is, we--the 
Federal Government--can't spend our way to growth and prosperity 
because the money we spend either has to come from taxpayers or be 
borrowed and eventually be paid back by taxpayers. The stimulus was 
supposed to keep unemployment below 8 percent, but we have just marked 
the 40th straight month of unemployment higher than 8 percent--above 8 
percent. I think such outcomes demonstrate why Republicans oppose these 
Keynesian spending policies. They simply don't work. If they did, we 
would be rolling in dough right now after four consecutive trillion-
dollar deficit spending sprees.
  To set the record straight, Republicans are not arguing that the 
Department of Defense is a jobs program. It is necessary for our 
national defense. That is why we spend the money. We are not saying we 
are going to fix the economy by undoing the defense cuts under the 
sequestration. We are not even saying defense-related jobs are the most 
important sequester-related issue. What we are saying is that defense 
cuts are very dangerous for our national security, and if they go 
through, not only is our safety jeopardized, but we may have more than 
1 million newly unemployed Americans. That is not a desirable outcome, 
and that is worth talking about. That is something we must keep in mind 
as this debate goes forward.
  In conclusion, I renew my call to my Democratic colleagues and to our 
House colleagues to get together--Republicans and Democrats, House and 
Senate--to do something we all know is in the best interest of the 
country: avoid the automatic sequestration, half of which applies to 
defense--we are all for a strong national defense--and half of which 
applies to all the other discretionary spending programs. All those 
things will suffer if we don't reprioritize our spending and our 
reductions in spending as opposed to allowing this to happen across the 
board.
  We do that by finding offsets we can agree upon in a way that will, 
as I said, set the priorities and enable the departments of government 
that have to plan for the future to do so in an intelligent way rather 
than simply knowing at the end of the year they are all going to have 
to have an across-the-board cut that isn't in anyone's best interest.
  It is not as if we are suggesting doing away with the savings that 
would result from sequestration, which is $109 billion for next year. 
Well, believe me, there is $109 billion in the $3-plus trillion 
spending we will be doing here. There certainly is $109 billion in 
savings we can achieve, and there have been several proposals already 
as to how that can be done. And it can be done without losing Federal 
jobs, it can be done without negatively impacting the economy, and it 
needs to be done under the law because Congress promised that we would 
save that $109 billion next year. It is just a matter of whether we 
will do so intelligently, making the decisions we can make--and that 
our constituents expect us to make--in an intelligent way, setting 
priorities, or whether we will simply succumb to the notion that we 
can't make a decision, so we will let it happen across the board.
  Just to give an illustration, how would you like to be a Navy admiral 
who hears the words: Here is your 80 percent of a submarine, admiral. 
It doesn't work that way. If we need the submarine, we need to pay for 
100 percent of the submarine and cut somewhere else. That is all we are 
suggesting. We need to do that while the planning can be done for next 
year; otherwise, we are going to have a very inefficient and Draconian 
cut coming up that is not going to benefit anyone.
  Again, I urge my colleagues, let's find a way to get together, find 
those savings, and get that done before we get toward the end of the 
year, when the departments can do the planning we will be asking them 
to do.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Shaheen). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, let me first of all express my 
appreciation to the majority. I understand I am to be given some 40 
minutes after the vote at the conclusion of the remarks by Senator 
Brown of Ohio. I have a subject that is very significant, and it is one 
I cannot do while being interrupted. So I appreciate starting this 
period off after the recess being able to express my concern over what 
I refer to as President Obama's war on fossil fuels and specifically 
today on coal. I look forward to that sometime around the 6 o'clock 
hour.
  With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, I rise to support the Paycheck Fairness 
Act that we are going to have a chance to vote on tomorrow. I hope my 
colleagues will support the effort of my colleague Senator Mikulski in 
allowing S. 3220 to move forward. I congratulate my colleague Senator 
Mikulski for her incredible leadership on behalf of women's issues. She 
has done that throughout her entire career, and we knew she would be in 
the forefront of this effort for paycheck fairness. I am proud to stand 
shoulder to shoulder with her in this fight for basic justice in our 
Nation, to provide equality of pay in this country based upon a 
person's work and not a person's gender.
  It builds on the Equal Pay Act of 1963 that was signed by President 
Kennedy. Yes, 1963 was the year Congress first spoke and said we are 
going to have equal pay for equal work in America, that America would 
show leadership internationally to say: Let's end discrimination 
against women in the workplace.
  That legislation fought sex discrimination in employment wages, 
including the fact that such discrimination not only depressed wages 
and living standards for female employees, but it affected our entire 
labor resources here in America, holding back the development of our 
country. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employers 
from engaging in discrimination against their employees based on 
gender.
  Today, women still face a pay gap. In 1963, women made 59 cents for 
every $1 made by a man. Those were the numbers in 1963. Today, women 
make just 77 cents for every $1 made by a man for equal work or 
comparable duties. That means a woman has to work 4 days to

[[Page 8206]]

get 3 days' pay. That is not acceptable. I understand we have made some 
progress since 1963, but one would think that within a 50-year span we 
could have done better.
  The Paycheck Fairness Act will allow us to reach our goal of equal 
pay for equal work. Estimates indicate that the wage gap costs women, 
on average, $434,000 over their careers. While I am pleased we are 
making progress, this progress is just too slow, and we need to move 
more aggressively to close this pay gap in the year 2012.
  Congress took another important step forward for equal rights for 
women by passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. The legislation 
allows plaintiffs to sue for wage discrimination based on each new 
discriminatory paycheck they receive. In this case, Congress overturned 
a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court which held that women were only 
allowed to sue their employers within 180 days after the discrimination 
began, even if the women were not aware the discrimination was 
occurring, as a result of not knowing their coworkers' wages.
  Quite frankly, I think the Supreme Court decision defies logic. How 
can someone possibly bring a case within 180 days if they do not know 
about the discriminatory pay differential? Congress did the right 
thing. But basically we held the line on allowing enforcement rather 
than advancing what we need to, to make sure we have an effective 
remedy for discrimination against women in our workplaces.
  That is exactly what the Paycheck Fairness Act does. It provides for 
an effective enforcement so women, in fact, can hold their employers 
responsible if the disparity is based upon their gender, which should 
not be in America.
  The Paycheck Fairness Act would require employers to show pay 
disparity is truly related to business justifications and job 
performance and not gender. It prohibits employer retaliation for 
sharing salary information with coworkers. Under current law, employers 
can sue and punish employees for sharing such information. In addition, 
this legislation strengthens remedies for pay discrimination by 
increasing compensation women can seek.
  The Paycheck Fairness Act also would strengthen the ability of the 
Department of Labor to help women achieve pay equity by requiring the 
Department of Labor to enhance outreach and training efforts to work 
with employers to eliminate pay disparities and to continue to collect 
and disseminate wage information based on gender.
  The purpose of this act is to avoid discriminatory pay, not to sue 
employers after the fact. Therefore, this bill, the Paycheck Fairness 
Act, is well balanced in providing remedies, yes, if, in fact, an 
employer is discriminating on pay based on gender but to provide help 
to employers so they can take the appropriate steps to make sure, in 
fact, their workforce is fairly paying their employees.
  The legislation makes clear that employers are liable only for wage 
differentials that are not bona fide factors. Bona fide factors include 
items such as education, training or experience and must be job related 
and consistent with business necessity. Employees will also be able to 
argue that employers should use alternative employment practices that 
would serve the same business purpose without producing the wage 
differential.
  The legislation is crafted to avoid any undue burden on small 
businesses. I think the Presiding Officer and I both understand the 
importance of small businesses with the work we do on the Small 
Business Committee. This act is delayed from taking effect until 6 
months after its passage so the Labor Secretary and EEOC can develop 
technical assistance materials to assist small businesses in complying 
with the new law, and the agencies are charged with engaging in 
research, education, and outreach on the new law.
  The EEOC is charged with issuing regulations to provide for the 
collection of pay information from employers. The law specifically 
states that these regulations should ``consider factors including the 
imposition of burdens on the employers, the frequency of required data 
collection reports . . . and the most effective format for data 
collection.''
  We have heard about the cumulative information: Why can't we simplify 
it? Why can't we combine it? Why can't we be sensitive to small 
businesses? The Paycheck Fairness Act in our language makes it clear 
these regulations must be sensitive to the special needs of small 
businesses to make sure, in fact, this bill provides an effective 
remedy without excessive burdens on the business community.
  In my own State of Maryland, the gender pay gap is 14.6 percent, 
according to the Joint Economic Committee. In Maryland, women's median 
weekly wage for full-time workers is $822, while men's is $962. That is 
not right. In Maryland, over one-third of married, employed mothers are 
their families' primary wage earner. Maryland women contribute, on 
average, over 40 percent of family wages and salary income to their 
households. It is time for women who live in Maryland--or who live in 
any State in our Nation--to get fair pay for the work they do.
  I have the opportunity to chair the subcommittee on the Senate 
Foreign Relations Committee that deals with international development 
assistance. I have worked very closely with Secretary of State Clinton 
to deal with gender issues internationally.
  We have discovered something that should be pretty obvious, but it is 
something that is very telling. The way a nation treats its women will 
very much be a barometer as to how well that nation is doing--how well 
they are doing with economic growth, how stable their government is. 
The United States has been a leader in working with countries around 
the world to treat women right, to do land reform so that the women who 
work the fields also own the property they are working, to make sure 
they share fairly in the fruits of their labor. We have been a leader 
internationally. I am proud of the progress we are making. I am proud 
of what Secretary Clinton and President Obama have done in showing the 
world that it is in a nation's interests to make sure women are 
properly dealt with, that they have proper education, that they are 
included in the system for education, for health care, for job 
training, for all of those issues, and are treated fairly when it comes 
to the economic rewards for the work they do. But it starts with us 
doing what is right in America.
  Fifty years is too long for women to wait for equal pay after 
Congress took action in 1963. As a father and grandfather of strong, 
intelligent women, pay equity is a personal issue for me. I want my two 
granddaughters to know that when they grow up, they will be paid fairly 
for the work and not 77 cents for every dollar of their male 
counterparts.
  I am proud to stand with Senator Mikulski in this fight to finally 
ensure that equal pay for equal work becomes a reality for all women 
and men. I am pleased that this legislation is endorsed by a large 
number of organizations that have been in the forefront of fighting for 
equal justice in America. It is time to act and pass the Paycheck 
Fairness Act.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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