If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed. -- Benjamin Franklin
Republicans working to improve their image among women aren’t worried about suffering a political backlash if they follow through with plans to block the Paycheck Fairness Act.
Most Senate Republicans are expected to unite on Wednesday to block the legislation, which would allow workers to compare salaries without the threat of retaliation, force companies to explain pay disparities between men and women and allow those discriminated against to seek punitive damages.
The GOP is hoping that voters know better than to fall for what Republicans call Democratic “show votes” in the pitched seven-month battle for control of the Senate. Minority Whip John Cornyn of Texas said he’s even privately chided Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) — who’s designed much of the Democrats’ election-year Fair Shot for Everyone agenda — over how transparently political Democrats have become in the past few weeks in laying out a Senate floor strategy heavy on legislation that has little chance of becoming law.
“This whole thing is really backfiring on the administration and on our Democratic friends because people are seeing it for what it is: It’s a transparent political campaign. It isn’t actually about solving problems, because the law of the land is already paycheck equity,” Cornyn said in an interview.
Added Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the chamber’s No. 3 Republican: “They don’t care about the fix. All they care about is who pays at the ballot box.”
Charlene Dill, a 32-year-old mother of three, collapsed and died on a stranger’s floor at the end of March. She was at an appointment to try to sell a vacuum cleaner, one of the three part-time jobs that she worked to try to make ends meet for her family. Her death was a result of a documented heart condition — and it could have been prevented.
Dill was uninsured, and she went years without the care she needed to address her chronic conditions because she couldn’t afford it.
Under the health reform law, which seeks to expand coverage to millions of low-income Americans, Dill wasn’t supposed to lack insurance. She was supposed to have access to a public health plan through the law’s expansion of the Medicaid program. But Dill, a Florida resident, is one of the millions of Americans living in a state that has refused to accept Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion after the Supreme Court ruled this provision to be optional. Those low-income people have been left in a coverage gap, making too much income to qualify for a public Medicaid plan but too little income to qualify for the federal subsidies to buy a plan on Obamacare’s private exchanges.
Florida has one of the highest uninsurance rates in the nation, and is home to a disproportionately large number of residents who struggle to afford health services. Nonetheless, lawmakers have continued to resist accepting generous federal funds to expand Medicaid to an estimated 750,000 low-income Floridians like Dill.
In an interview with The Daily Times Herald of Iowa, Senate Candidate Sam Clovis said the reason Obama hasn't been impeached yet is a "practical matter."
"I don't think so and I'll tell you why. It's not that what he has done would not rise to the level where it might be impeachable," Clovis said. "I don't think it's a practical, pragmatic issue and simply because I don't think the nation is ready for it. You know, within this generation we just went through an impeachment of a president and it didn't end well and now we have a situation where race is thrown into the card as well. And whether we like it or not, race is an issue."
The Daily Times Herald asked Clovis if he thought Congress wasn't trying to impeach Obama because of his skin color.
"Not knowing, I haven't talked to anybody [sic]," Clovis said. "But I would say there are people in the House of Representatives right now that would very much like to take the opportunity to start the process and I think the reason that they're not is because they're concerned about the media."
Clovis was then asked if he members of Congress are worried about what it would look like in news coverage to impeach the president because he's black. Clovis simply responded "yes."