One Wisconsin Now

One Wisconsin Now is marking the 45th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act’s passage by calling on Senator John McCain to promote policies in the U.S. Senate that close the pay gap between women and men once and for all.

In April, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) skipped the vote on the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would have restored workers’ ability to pursue pay discrimination claims in the courts and provided greater protection for women receiving unfair wages. McCain explained his opposition to the bill by saying that instead of equal pay protection, women simply needed “education and training.” He even told a 14-year-old girl that he didn’t think protections for equal pay would do” anything to help the rights of women.”

The women and families of Wisconsin and the nation can’t afford McCain’s kind of costly inaction. In 2006, Wisconsin women’s wages were about 22 percent lower than men’s. That means a women working full-time in the state would earn around $28,000 per year, on average, compared with over $36,500 for a man. Earlier this year, Dave Hansen (D-Green Bay) and Representative Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee) authored the Equal Pay Enforcement Act. It passed in the state Senate but continues to languish in the Wisconsin Assembly. It’s time for Senator McCain to set the tone for our nation and its state legislatures by making equitable wages for women a priority.

Just yesterday U.S. Senator John McCain once again proved just how out of touch he is with regular working Americans. Despite all of the struggles that people are having he declared “I have a great belief that the fundamentals of the economy are very strong. Very strong.” Apparently he had to say it twice just to convince himself that the statement was true. Less than 24 hours after he made his proclamation, the Labor Department reported that the jobless rate has jumped to 5.5 percent in May, the biggest rise since 1986. That equates to 49,000 more jobs lost by President Bush and his enablers like McCain in Congress.

For McCain the eighth richest U.S. Senator with nine properties worth more than 13 million dollars, maybe the economy does seem very strong. Unfortunately not everyone is as privileged as the Arizona Senator. While he may be living high on the hog, working Americans are struggling to pay their mortgages, fill their gas tanks and pay the ever growing costs for basics like health care and food. On the economy the Senator promises more of the same, tax cuts for the wealthiest and even more tax loopholes for big corporations. He chooses this approach even though over the last seven years it has produced a disaster for our economy. McCain appears willingly delusional about our economy, even if that means celebrating things like record setting job loss.