Obama Pays Women Less Than Men?

Investor's Business Daily had this little tidbit posted on their web site on Friday. I've seen the Obama ads accusing McCain of opposing equal pay for women, but it's funny to see what can be discovered if someone is willing to do the looking.

IBD starts the post off with this statement: "Barack Obama has criticized John McCain's actions in the case of Lilly Ledbetter, who sued for alleged pay discrimination. But if Obama supports equal pay for equal work, why doesn't he do it in his office?"

Now, IBD is not some fly-by-night publication. They wouldn't post something like this without doing a little bit of research. Here's what they had to say. Talking about the Lilly Ledbetter case, IBD writes, "He [Obama] claimed 'the Supreme Court made it more difficult for a woman named Lily Ledbetter to press her claim for pay discrimination.' Actually the Court did nothing of the sort. It merely said the law put a time limit on filing such claims and that Ledbetter missed the cutoff - by almost two decades."

For those not familiar with Lilly Ledbetter, IBD provides a bit of background: she was a supervisor at a tire company who retired after 19 years of work; she sued the tire company upon her retirement; she waited too long to file her complaint. The Supreme Court upheld the law saying that 180 days was long enough to facilitate the filing of a complaint.

Obama's response? According to IBD, Obama said "Sen. McCain thinks the Supreme Court got it right. He opposed the Fair Pay Restoration Act. He suggested the reason women don't have equal pay isn't discrimination on the job - it's because they need more education and training. That's just totally wrong."

But IBD cites Carrie Lukas, the vice president for policy and economics at the Independent Women's Forum, as saying the Labor Department statistics quoted by Obama do not "...take into account factors such as years of experience, hours worked, education, service interruptions for marriage and child rearing." In other words, just using pure dollar amounts doesn't provide an accurate assessment.

Using pure dollar amounts as a measure, IBD says, "...covering the six-month period ended March 31, 2008, you'd think McCain was the champion of Rosie the Riveter and Obama the heartless male chauvinist troglodyte." The article says Obama's male staffers in the Senate received total compensation of $1,523,120. Divided among the 28 of them, that works out to an average of $54,397. Obama's female staffers received $1,354,580 in total compensation. Given there are 30 of them, that works out to an average of just $45,152, or 83 cents on the dollar when compared to their male counterparts.

How does McCain rate? According to IBD his 17 male senate staffers make an average of $53,936, while his female staffers make an average of $55,878. "In McCain's office," IBD says, "a woman earns $1.04 for every buck a man makes."