{"id":28949,"date":"2016-04-13T08:05:00","date_gmt":"2016-04-13T15:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/with-new-monument-obama-dems-seize-on-equal-pay-day\/"},"modified":"2016-04-13T08:05:00","modified_gmt":"2016-04-13T15:05:00","slug":"with-new-monument-obama-dems-seize-on-equal-pay-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/with-new-monument-obama-dems-seize-on-equal-pay-day\/","title":{"rendered":"With new monument, Obama, Dems seize on Equal Pay Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON<\/strong> \u2014 President Barack Obama and other Democrats on Tuesday seized on Equal Pay Day \u2014 a symbolic event dramatizing how much longer it takes a woman to earn as much as a man \u2014 to court women voters and call out Republicans for inaction on the issue.<\/p>\n

Obama dedicated a new national monument to women\u2019s equality and pushed Congress to pass legislation. He suggested he\u2019s encouraged by movement toward full gender equality in many arenas \u2014 including corporate boardrooms, professional sports and presidential politics.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we truly value fairness then America should be a level playing field,\u201d the president said, as he joined House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Maryland Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski and other Democrats at the Sewall-Belmont House and Museum in D.C., the onetime home of the National Women\u2019s Party now designated as Belmont-Paul Women\u2019s Equality National Monument. Alva Belmont and Alice Paul were figures in the women\u2019s rights and suffrage movements.<\/p>\n

The Democrats\u2019 focus on Equal Pay comes amid a presidential campaign where the Republican front-runner, Donald Trump, has alienated female voters in droves, leading to GOP fears he could diminish the party\u2019s standing with that key constituency for years to come. Yet once again this year, Obama and Democratic lawmakers trumpet their equal pay proposals at news conferences and briefings, Republicans have little to offer in return.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe feel we shouldn\u2019t be playing identity politics, we should be working together to strengthen families,\u201d said Sarah Chamberlain, president of the Republican Main Street Partnership, which advocates for pragmatic, center-right policies.<\/p>\n

Democrats support legislation requiring employers to show pay disparity is not based on gender, among other steps. The bill, which passed the House when it was under Democratic control but was blocked by Senate Republicans, builds on the first law Obama signed as president, the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, aimed at making it easier for women to sue over wage discrimination.<\/p>\n

For their part, the Republicans who control the House and Senate have announced no plans to act on legislation addressing pay inequity, even though a few GOP lawmakers are pushing bills on the issue. Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., said she is hoping for Democratic support for her narrowly focused bill allowing employees to share wage information. GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte said she is working with House Republicans to get on board with her broader bill, modeled on one that passed in her home state of New Hampshire.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo say that Republicans don\u2019t care about equal pay, that\u2019s just ludicrous that anybody even says that,\u201d Fischer said. \u201cEverybody cares about equal pay. That\u2019s a value that we all share.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republican women dispute the notion that \u201cwomen\u2019s issues\u201d are separate from any other issues, noting that women care strongly about national security, the drug epidemic and other matters not specifically related to their gender. With the GOP presidential primary season veering chaotically toward a contested convention, most Capitol Hill Republicans are also avoiding taking any steps that could connect them to the mess, including the perception that they are acting in response to Trump.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just put these in the context of good government and the right thing to do. I don\u2019t put it in the context of anything else,\u201d Ayotte said. \u201cI mean I\u2019ve been working on this well before this presidential race.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet the result is that the one group arguably best positioned to act as a counterweight to Trump with women voters \u2014 female Republican elected officials \u2014 has largely allowed his controversial statements on women to go unanswered even as Democrats look likely to elevate the first major-party female presidential nominee in Hillary Clinton.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Obama hinted he views Clinton\u2019s campaign as historic progress \u2014 although he has not formally endorsed her bid. He said he hoped visitors to the museum will someday be astonished that there was ever a time when women could not vote.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want them to be astonished that there was ever a time when women earned less than men for doing the same work. I want them to be astonished that there was ever a time when women were vastly outnumbered in the boardroom or in Congress, or there was ever a time when a woman had never sat in the Oval Office,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t know how long it will take to get there, but I know we\u2019re getting closer to that day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clinton was participating in a round table discussion on the issue in New York City Tuesday, hosted by job website Glassdoor. Members of the U.S. women\u2019s soccer team recently filed a wage-discrimination complaint against U.S. Soccer, and actress Jennifer Lawrence has spoken out about making less than her male co-stars, drawing more attention to the issue than it has had in the past.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese were not always major issues in presidential campaigns but they are major issues today,\u201d said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., who is hosting a briefing on pay equity Tuesday with actress Patricia Arquette. Of Trump, who had to recant after suggesting women should be punished for having abortions, Maloney added: \u201cI think that he is in the Middle Ages.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump himself was questioned by a voter at a rally last fall on whether she would make as much as a man if Trump were elected. \u201cYou\u2019re going to make the same if you do as good a job,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

__<\/p>\n

Associated Press writers Darlene Superville and Kevin Freking contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 President Barack Obama and other Democrats on Tuesday seized on Equal Pay Day \u2014 a symbolic event dramatizing how much longer it takes a woman to earn as much as a man \u2014 to court women voters and call out Republicans for inaction on the issue. Obama dedicated a new national monument to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-28949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28949\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28949"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=28949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}