let me just say to those who are following this debate, if we go to the dictionary and look up the word ``persistent,'' there will be a picture of Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland. She has been our leader on so many important issues. The very first bill signed by President Barack Obama--and she remembers the day, as I do--we were standing there when he signed the Lilly Ledbetter law, which protected the principle of equal pay for equal work by allowing workers to pursue pay discrimination cases beyond the arbitrary, unreasonable window that had been set up by the Supreme Court. When President Obama signed that first bill, his first bill as President of the United States, he handed the first pen of that signing to Senator Barbara Mikulski. It was entirely appropriate. No one has dedicated more of her professional and public life to this cause of justice than Senator Mikulski. It is nearly 50 years after the passage of the Equal Pay Act. Now we have to ask ourselves, well, how are things going in America when it comes to equal pay? It turns out that when it comes to the managerial positions of women and men, women make 81 cents for every dollar paid to a man when they are managers of a business. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the gap grows larger--77 cents for your daughter as opposed to a dollar for your son--when you look at the entire working population. As the father of a daughter and a son, that is unfair.…
On the recordJune 5, 2012
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