[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 5] [Extensions of Remarks] [Page 6606] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]EQUAL PAY DAY ______ HON. GEORGE MILLER of california in the house of representatives Tuesday, April 22, 2008 Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Madam Speaker, today, on Equal Pay Day, Americans are reminded of how far we have to go in order to eliminate pay inequity between men and women in the United States. While our Nation has made many strides in the fight against discrimination, the struggle for equal pay for equal work continues. On this day, we remind ourselves that much more work needs to be done. Women have seen recent success shattering a number of glass ceilings within the ranks of corporate and government leadership. Yet the fact is that American women are still only being paid 77 cents for every dollar that their male counterparts earn with the same education, training, and experience. Any wage gap based on sex is unacceptable. The current one is staggering. As pay equity advocate Evelyn Murphy has calculated, the current wage gap means a woman with a high school education will lose $700,000 over her lifetime. A woman with a college education will lose $1.2 million over her lifetime. And a woman with a professional degree will lose $2 million over her lifetime. But unequal pay not only surfaces in workers' weekly paychecks, it also harms workers' retirement and health care security. Its sheer irrationality hinders the American economy as a whole. In the new global economy, those who stand in the way of equal pay are tying one hand behind America's back. Holding women back not only hurts workers, it's bad for business. And even where progress is made on the most insidious forms of intentional discrimination, reactionaries are still trying to roll back these protections. Just last year, the Supreme Court did precisely that in the case of Ledbetter v. Goodyear. Lilly Ledbetter worked for nearly two decades at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company plant in Alabama. She sued the company soon after learning that she was paid less than her male counterparts. A jury found that her employer had unlawfully discriminated against her on the basis of sex. But, five members of the United States Supreme Court rejected longstanding law and said that Lilly Ledbetter did not file a complaint quickly enough, nullifying the jury's verdict. In fact, Ms. Ledbetter filed her complaint as soon as she learned of the pay discrepancy through an anonymous note in her mailbox. However, the Supreme Court ruled that the clock on filing started to run when the employer made its discriminatory pay decisions, decisions which the employer effectively hid by explicitly forbidding anyone to discuss their pay. So despite finding that Ms. Ledbetter was unlawfully paid less than her male counterparts, she could not recover anything. The company that paid her less just because she was a woman owed her nothing. A slim majority of the Supreme Court shunned reason in order to satisfy its own narrow ideological agenda. I am proud to say that just months after the ruling the House of Representatives repudiated the Supreme Court's decision by passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would restore workers' right to challenge discriminatory paychecks. Today should serve as a call to action to end the pay inequity that half of our country's workforce continues to endure. The Senate should pass and the President should sign the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. And the Congress should take up additional legislation to strengthen the Equal Pay Act. I urge my colleagues to recommit themselves to the fight for equal pay. The wage gap between men and women must disappear. And the Congress has a very clear role to play in that effort. ____________________