3 posts tagged “senate”

This is just one small indication of how elections have consequences, and things really are changing...

LEDBETTER ACT PASSES....Good news on the pay discrimination front:

The Senate approved landmark worker rights legislation on Thursday that will make it easier for those who think they've endured pay discrimination to seek legal help. The vote was 61-36.

....The legislation overrides a May 2007 Supreme Court ruling that [Lilly] Ledbetter, a Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company employee in Gadsden, Ala., couldn't sue her employer for pay discrimination because she didn't file suit within 180 days of the alleged discriminatory act.

McClatchy, naturally, doesn't bother to tell its readers the party breakdown of the vote, but it's actually an interesting one: all 56 voting Democrats supported the bill, and five Republicans joined in. Which ones? Arlen Specter plus all four of the women in the GOP caucus. Imagine that.

(From Kevin Drum/Mother Jones)

So here you have the Democrats, not a few days in from inauguration... passing a law which says that women have the right to sue on the basis of discrimination if they are paid less for the same job as a man.  Now, this had actually been the law of the land, until Bush's two Supreme Court Justices took the bench.  When they overturned the reading of the law, Bush refused to sign a new law outlawing pay discrimination. 

Needless to say, the republicans still have not gotten the message.  Most of them in the Senate voted against the bill.  These are the small details that most people don't know.  Details that really would make a difference in the way people vote.  Keep that in mind in four years.

I'm trying to look past the Democratic primary to the general election.  Now, there are some people who say that McCain wouldn't be that bad.  I'm here to tell you that this is a gravely mistaken assumption.  Here's one in a long list of reasons why McCain would be just as bad as Bush...  Equal pay for women.

A Republican minority in the Senate has thwarted attempts to repair the damage done by a bare majority of the Supreme Court in Ledbetter, which determined that companies should be able to engage in pay discrimination without the threat of punitive damages as long as they're able to to keep employees in the dark about it for 180 days after it starts. John McCain, although he didn't show up to the vote, applauds the Senate's decision to help companies pay women unequal wages:

"I am all in favor of pay equity for women, but this kind of legislation, as is typical of what's being proposed by my friends on the other side of the aisle, opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems," the expected GOP presidential nominee told reporters. "This is government playing a much, much greater role in the business of a private enterprise system."

In other words, McCain favors women's rights...as long as they can't actually sue to enforce them. People who, affected by the bitterness of the primary, are tempted to think that the parties are indistinguishable may want to consider the votes in both the Senate and on the Supreme Court.

So McCain would like to support the retrograde republican-appointed Supreme Court which came to the tortured logic that the law regarding pay equity doesn't permit anyone to actually enforce it.  The Ledbetter decision is so patently ridiculous, that I almost feel embarrassed for the Justices who signed on to it.  It may be embarrassing, but sadly, it is not surprising.  These jack-holes never saw a law limiting the ability of our corporate overlords to exploit us which they didn't like.  With McCain, we'll get another generation of idiots like Alito, Scalia, and Thomas... and seemingly reasonable, but stealthily nasty corporate apologists like Roberts.

One thing I can promise is that with a President Obama (or Clinton), the next Justices will look nothing like that losers that Bush appointed...

A lot of people are frustrated with the fact that although the Democrats have a (slim) majority in Congress, they have been unable to make much headway in winding down the debacle war in Iraq.  I'm frustrated too, but knowing how the Senate works, you can see that in the face of a unified republican opposition, there really isn't much that the Democrats can do.  Normally, you'd think that you need just a majority of votes to get something passed in Congress... but you'd be wrong.  In the Senate, the minority party can Filibuster a law, and thus require it to need 60 votes to pass, rather than 51.  This is a very difficult thing to do when you only have 51 Democratic senators (counting Joe Lieberman - which means you only have 50).  In the past, the Filibuster was only used on extraordinary occasions, when the minority party felt really strongly that a certain bill shouldn't pass.  However, now that the republicans are in the minority, they are using it for virtually every bill.  This is the modern republican party at work.  Kevin Drum has a great post on this which has been widely discussed on the political blogs.

GOP_Filibusters

As you can see, Republicans aren't just obstructing legislation at normal rates. They're obstructing legislation at three times the usual rate. They're absolutely desperate to keep this stuff off the president's desk, where the only choice is to either sign it or else take the blame for a high-profile veto.

As things stand, though, Republicans will largely avoid blame for their tactics. After all, the first story linked above says only that the DC bill "came up short in the Senate" and the second one that the habeas bill "fell short in the Senate." You have to read with a gimlet eye to figure out how the vote actually broke down, and casual readers will come away thinking that the bills failed because of some kind of generic Washington gridlock, not GOP obstructionism.

So, for the record, here are the votes. On the habeas bill, Democrats and Independents voted 50-1 in favor. Republicans voted 42-8 against. On the DC bill, Democrats and Independents voted 49-1 in favor. Republicans voted 41-8 against. Would it really be so hard for reporters to make it clear exactly who's responsible for blocking these bills?