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Weekly Address: President Obama – Ensuring Equal Pay for Equal Work

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The President’s Weekly Address post is also the Weekend Open News Thread. Feel free to share other news stories in the comments.

 

From the White House – Weekly Address

In this week’s address, the President underscores the importance of ensuring equal pay for equal work and highlights the steps his Administration has taken to expand opportunity and narrow the pay gap that exists between men and women.

Transcript: Weekly Address: Ensuring Equal Pay for Equal Work

Hi, everybody.  Earlier this week was Equal Pay Day.  It marks the extra time the average woman has to work into a new year to earn what a man earned the year before.  You see, the average woman who works full-time in America earns less than a man – even when she’s in the same profession and has the same education.

That’s wrong.  In 2014, it’s an embarrassment. Women deserve equal pay for equal work.

This is an economic issue that affects all of us.  Women make up about half our workforce.  And more and more, they’re our families’ main breadwinners.  So it’s good for everyone when women are paid fairly.  That’s why, this week, I took action to prohibit more businesses from punishing workers who discuss their salaries – because more pay transparency makes it easier to spot pay discrimination.  And I hope more business leaders will take up this cause.

But equal pay is just one part of an economic agenda for women.



Most lower-wage workers in America are women.  So I’ve taken executive action to require federal contractors to pay their federally-funded employees at least ten dollars and ten cents an hour.  I ordered a review of our nation’s overtime rules, to give more workers the chance to earn the overtime pay they deserve.  Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, tens of millions of women are now guaranteed free preventive care like mammograms and contraceptive care, and the days when you could be charged more just for being a woman are over for good.  Across the country, we’re bringing Americans together to help us make sure that a woman can have a baby without sacrificing her job, or take a day off to care for a sick child or parent without hitting hardship.  It’s time to do away with workplace policies that belong in a “Mad Men” episode, and give every woman the opportunity she deserves.

Here’s the problem, though.  On issues that would benefit millions of women, Republicans in Congress have blocked progress at every turn. Just this week, Senate Republicans blocked the Paycheck Fairness Act, commonsense legislation that would help more women win equal pay for equal work.  House Republicans won’t vote to raise the minimum wage or extend unemployment insurance for women out of work through no fault of their own.  The budget they passed this week would force deep cuts to investments that overwhelmingly benefit women and children – like Medicaid, food stamps, and college grants.  And of course, they’re trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act for the fiftieth or so time, which would take away vital benefits and protections from millions of women.

I’m going to keep fighting to make sure that doesn’t happen.  Because we do better when our economy grows for everybody, not just a few.  And when women succeed, America succeeds.  Thanks, and have a great weekend

Bolding added.

~


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5 comments

  1. JanF

    (No transcript yet)

    USA Today: Obama warns right to vote in US faces biggest threat in half a century

    NEW YORK (AP) – In an unsparing critique of Republicans, President Barack Obama on Friday accused the GOP of using voting restrictions to keep voters from the polls and of jeopardizing 50 years of expanded ballot box access for millions of black Americans and other minorities.

    “The stark, simple truth is this: The right to vote is threatened today in a way that it has not been since the Voting Rights Act became law nearly five decades ago,” Obama said in a fiery speech at civil rights activist and television talk host Al Sharpton’s National Action Network conference.[…]

    “Across the country, Republicans have led efforts to pass laws making it harder, not easier, for people to vote,” he said, relating anecdotes of voters turned away because they didn’t have the right identification or because they needed a passport or birth certificate to register.

    “About 60 percent of Americans don’t have a passport,” he said. “Just because you can’t have the money to travel abroad doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be able to vote here at home.”

    He lays the blame squarely where it belongs:

    The president pinned efforts to curb access to the ballot box directly on the GOP, declaring that the effort “has not been led by both parties. It’s been led by the Republican Party.” Mocking the Republicans, he said, “What kind of political platform is that? Why would you make that a part of your agenda, preventing people from voting?”

    Republicans have argued that they voter laws seek to safeguard the voting process and are not an attempt to limit Democratic turnout.

  2. HappyinVT

    pay is one of them.

    I have started taking an online course on the ACA being offered through Harvard and so far, a week, it is clear Obama wanted it done and done in the first years.  The process has been interesting to say the least and I look forward to the post-presidency memoirs.

    (Am hoping to write a piece on the class tomorrow; got bogged down in work today.)

  3. JanF

    What the heck are they going to do when the find out that Obama is not running? How quickly can you pivot from “the Kenyan ursurper is wrecking our freedoms” to “generic Democratic candidate”? If they are counting on racism, the likelihood of the Democratic nominee being black is pretty slim.  

    And speaking of wrecking our freedoms, what the huck is this guy talking about? Huckabee: Beginning To Think There Is More Freedom In North Korea Than U.S.

    “When I go to the airport, I have to get in the surrender position, people put hands all over me, and I have to provide photo ID and a couple of different forms and prove that I really am not going to terrorize the airplane – but if I want to go vote I don’t need a thing,”

    First, has he ever been in the airport in a country with a repressive regime? My first reaction was “holy crap, who are all these guys with machine guns??”. And second, where the heck does he vote where he “doesn’t need a thing”? There are very few states left where you don’t have to show photo ids in order to vote. Maybe where he votes, a white face is a get-into-the-voting-booth-without-id card.

  4. JanF

    Armed Right-Wing Militia Members Descend On Nevada To Help Rancher Defy Court Order

    “We provide armed response,” according to a Montana militia member named Jim Lordy. Lordy traveled to Nevada in order to support a local rancher for believes that he should not have to follow federal court orders. When he arrived there, he told a local reporter that “[w]e need guns to protect ourselves from the tyrannical government.”

    The Oath Keepers, a right-wing law enforcement organization that warns about the government “disarm[ing] the American people” and “blockad[ing] American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps,” also announced that it will send people to support the defiant rancher.

    What’s the dispute? A rancher has decided that he don’t need no stinkin’ land ownership … he will just use the government’s land for his cattle.

    This conflict arises out of rancher Cliven Bundy’s many years of illegally grazing his cattle on federal lands. In 1998, a federal court ordered Bundy to cease grazing his livestock on an area of federal land known as the Bunkerville Allotment […]

    Last October, the federal government returned to court and obtained a new order, providing that “Bundy shall remove his livestock from the former Bunkerville Allotment within 45 days of the date hereof, and that the United States is entitled to seize and remove to impound any of Bundy’s cattle that remain in trespass after 45 days of the date hereof.” A third federal court order issued the same year explains that Bundy did not simply refuse to stop trespassing on federal lands – he actually expanded the range of his trespassing.

    Bundy claims that the federal government does not own that land but somehow forgets to explain how he does.

    After the feds moved in to enforce the court order, they backed off, fearing the armed ranchers. Sigh. Emboldened by that, Bundy doubled down:

    Rancher Cliven Bundy demanded of sheriff Doug Gillespie that all narional park service employees working on the cattle roundup operation be disarmed before 10:45 a.m.

    He gave Gillespie one hour to comply, and added for the firearms to be brought to him.

    So why are his fellow ranchers willing to let this guy graze his cattle on federal lands when they have to play by the rules? Are they so consume by hatred of the federal government that they are willing to turn a blind eye to someone who is cheating to gain an economic advantage over them?  

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