MORE ON THE REBUBLICAN’S WAR ON WOMEN
TPM2012
Major Leagues: Team Obama Outmaneuvers Romney On Women
Benjy SarlinApril 12, 2012, 6:08 AM20439172
It took tens of millions of dollars, years of preparation and three months of primary contests, but Mitt Romney is finally the GOP’s presumptive nominee. Now comes the hard part.
Romney’s first day of the general election turned into a stark reminder that Obama will be a far tougher opponent than the poorly funded, disorganized candidates he battled in the primary. Romney was outmaneuvered and forced off message throughout the day — beginning with a morning press call in which the campaign was caught flat-footed over a simple question about Romney’s position on the Lilly Ledbetter Act — overshadowing the economic message he was trying to push, with the gleeful help of an armada of professional Democratic operatives.
The new Republican standard-bearer began the morning on FOX News on the defensive, pushing back against Democrats’ claim of a Republican “war on women” by blaming Obama for slow job growth among women.
“His polices have been really a war on women,” Romney said. “Over 92 percent of the jobs lost under this president were lost by women.”
The move was a classic example of what has become a consistent Romney maneuver: projecting his own vulnerabilities onto his opponent, in this case his toxic polling with women voters. But Romney’s move quickly revealed the dangers of playing on your opponent’s territory.
A group of Romney advisers held a conference call immediately after the Fox News interview in which they repeated Romney’s “92 percent” claim and lamented the “enormous damage” done to women under Obama. But when three reporters asked the logical follow up — why are there fewer jobs for men in recent months and what would Romney do to fix the gender gap in hiring? — they were unable to offer any explanation. Another obvious follow-up question, “Does Romney support the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which makes it easier for women to sue over pay discrimination and was Obama’s first signed law?” generated only a long, awkward pause before an aide finally responded: “We’ll get back to you on that.”
The Democratic machine sprang into action. Operatives jumped on the Ledbetter line, sending it out to supporters and media and urging Romney to detail his position. Before Romney’s campaign could even clarify, the Obama campaign had already produced a lengthy statement from Ledbetter herself, describing how “shocked and disappointed” she was by the ambiguity. Democrats had also distributed a copy of the audio from the Romney camp’s phone call.
The Romney campaign, which was trying to shift the discussion to its preferred topic of jobs, instead was forced to backpedal on equal pay, an issue on which the GOP is on much shakier ground with women voters. A spokeswoman for the Romney campaign told TPM he supported “pay equity” but as for the bill itself, she’d only say that the candidate is “not looking to change current law.”
That put Romney on the other side of the overwhelming majority of Republican lawmakers, who almost unanimously opposed the bill’s passage in 2009.
National and state Democrats sent out dozens of press releases on Ledbetter within hours.
“For the president, equal pay for equal work has always been a no- brainer,” DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said in a conference call with bloggers. “Meanwhile on a question that shouldn’t have required a millisecond of hesitation, Mitt Romney’s aides responded with a deafening six-second silence followed by, ‘We’ll get back to you on that.’”
By then, the Romney campaign was firmly on defense, issuing statements from female supporters attesting to Romney’s commitment to “pay equity” and repeating the party line that Obama’s economic policies are worse for women. Democratic operatives, again with lightning speed, instantly noted that two such statements came from congresswomen who voted against the Ledbetter law, Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Mary Bono Mack.
Meanwhile, Romney’s “92 percent” statistic was also taking a beating. The Romney camp ended the day struggling to defend the number which, while technically accurate, was almost universally judged misleading by independent analysis, as there were clear economic reasons behind the gender gap that had nothing to do with Obama, and, again, Romney offered no coherent explanation as to why the disparity existed or how he would change the ratio himself. By the late afternoon, Romney’s aides were publicly demanding that Politifact — hardly the only outlet to criticize the claim — retract its article judging the line “mostly false,” wading into a distracting process fight rather than touting the jobs message they’d planned to champion all day. Politifact agreed to a review, but noted correctly that many outlets reached the same conclusion, including the Washington Post and AP.
The closest Romney came to regaining footing was launching an all-out grievance war Wednesday night on a Democratic pundit who appeared on CNN. Hillary Rosen, who has no connection to the Obama campaign, awkwardly suggested Ann Romney can’t fully understand working mothers because she “never worked a day in her life.” Ann Romney herself joined Twitter just to respond, which helped give the story legs and at least forced actual Obama aides like David Axelrod and Jim Messina off the sideline to quickly condemn the remark.
As difficult a time Romney had overcoming a parade of challengers to take the GOP nomination, the episode underscored just how much tougher the general election will be. Democrats have built a finely tuned — and loud — messaging and research operation. And Romney, for the first time in more than five years, had to navigate an electorate that included more than just base Republicans, abandoning his party’s near-unanimous stance on a pay-equity bill in order to avoid doing even more damage to his already anemic share on women voters. His opponents have more cash then him for now to boot, a situation completely alien to Romney, who outspent his nearest primary competitor at 5:1 clip.
Twenty-four hours after Santorum’s exit, the scoreboard shows Obama 1, Romney 0.
2012, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/04/major-leagues-team-obama-outmaneuvers-romney-on-women.php
Will the GOP's 'war on women' hurt Mitt Romney in November?
By Meghan Holbrook, ksl.com Contributor
SALT LAKE CITY -- In a national presidential election that was supposed to be all about the economy, gender politics have become a significant issue. A recent USA Today-Gallup poll taken in a dozen battleground states showed that among independent women — a key group of swing voters — President Obama took a 14-point lead over Mitt Romney, marking a net gain of 19 points in just a few months.
Romney leads among all men by a single point, but (President Obama) leads among women by 18 (points). That reflects a greater disparity between the views of men and women than the 12-point gender gap in the 2008 election. -USA Today Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus compared the so-called Republican "war on women" to a "war on caterpillars," as something created by Democrats and the mainstream media to mislead the public. However, whatever it is called, some in the GOP seem bent on rolling back women's rights to affordable health care, reliable contraception, and safe termination of pregnancies caused by rape and incest. And many women are concerned.
Although the GOP may not think it is fighting a "war on women," its female senators do. Recently, United States Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) joined Senators Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) in criticizing the GOP's push for legislation to restrict access to contraception and other basic health care services for women.
Senator Murkowski said, "It makes no sense to make this attack on women. If you don't feel this is an attack, you need to go home and talk to your wife and your daughters."
Senator Murkowski also spoke out against Rush Limbaugh's attack on Sandra Fluke, adding, "To have those kinds of slurs against a woman … [we] had candidates who want to be our president not say, ‘That's wrong. That's offensive.' They did not condemn the rhetoric."
Neil Newhouse, the lead pollster for Mitt Romney, said his candidate's recent problems with women probably represent fallout from arguments that women have been hearing from Congressional Republicans about contraception and other women's issues. Although Newhouse doesn't think so, this could become an electoral problem for the GOP presidential candidate in November.
http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=757&sid=19930959
Wisconsin State Senator Says Women Are Paid Less Because ‘Money Is More Important For Men’
By Travis Waldron on Apr 9, 2012 at 3:07 pm
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) quietly repealed his state’s equal pay law last week, a decision that will make it harder for victims of wage discrimination to sue for lost earnings and back wages. The law was enacted primarily to address the massive pay gap that exists between male and female workers, which is even bigger in Wisconsin than in other states.
Repealing the law was a no-brainer for state Sen. Glenn Grothman (R), who led the effort because of his belief that pay discrimination is a myth driven by liberal women’s groups. Ignoring multiple studies showing that the pay gap exists, Grothman blamed females for prioritizing childrearing and homemaking instead of money, saying, “Money is more important for men,” The Daily Beast reports:
Whatever gaps exist, he insists, stem from women’s decision to prioritize childrearing over their careers. “Take a hypothetical husband and wife who are both lawyers,” he says. “But the husband is working 50 or 60 hours a week, going all out, making 200 grand a year. The woman takes time off, raises kids, is not go go go. Now they’re 50 years old. The husband is making 200 grand a year, the woman is making 40 grand a year. It wasn’t discrimination. There was a different sense of urgency in each person.” [...]
Grothman doesn’t accept these studies. When I ran the numbers by him, he replied, “The American Association of University Women is a pretty liberal group.” Nor, he argued, does its conclusion take into account other factors, like “goals in life. You could argue that money is more important for men. I think a guy in their first job, maybe because they expect to be a breadwinner someday, may be a little more money-conscious. To attribute everything to a so-called bias in the workplace is just not true.”
Among Grothman’s inaccuracies is the idea that only males “expect to be a breadwinner someday.” In two-thirds of American families, women are either primary or co-breadwinners, and yet they still earn less than their male counterparts in all 50 states.
In 2011, the Wisconsin GOP carried out an extensive war on workers that led to recall efforts for state representatives, senators, and Walker himself. In 2012, Grothman and his colleagues have expanded that war to one on women, meaning a group of workers that was already struggling to keep pace with their male counterparts is only going to fall further behind.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/04/09/460917/wisconsin-state-senator-money-less-important-wome/?mobile=nc
Scott Walker Quietly Repeals Wisconsin Equal Pay Law
Posted: 04/ 6/2012 12:09 pm Updated: 04/ 6/2012 2:19 pm
WASHINGTON -- A Wisconsin law that made it easier for victims of wage discrimination to have their day in court was repealed on Thursday, after Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) quietly signed the bill.
The 2009 Equal Pay Enforcement Act was meant to deter employers from discriminating against certain groups by giving workers more avenues via which to press charges. Among other provisions, it allows individuals to plead their cases in the less costly, more accessible state circuit court system, rather than just in federal court.
In November, the state Senate approved SB 202, which rolled back this provision. On February, the Assembly did the same. Both were party-line votes in Republican-controlled chambers.
SB 202 was sent to Walker on March 29. He had, according to the state constitution, six days to act on the bill. The deadline was 5:00 p.m. on Thursday. The governor quietly signed the bill into law on Thursday, according to the Legislative Reference Bureau, and it is now called Act 219.
Walker's office did not return repeated requests for comment.
State Sen. Dave Hansen (D-Green Bay) and Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee), the authors of the Equal Pay Enforcement Act, criticized Walker on Thursday for not informing the public of his actions on SB 202.
“We are finally starting to see progress here in Wisconsin, yet like their counterparts across the country, Legislative Republicans want to turn back the clock on women’s rights in the workplace,” said Hansen.
Women earn 77 cents for every dollar that men make. In Wisconsin, it's 75 cents, according to the Wisconsin Alliance for Women’s Health (WAWH), which also estimates that families in the state "lose more than $4,000 per year due to unequal pay."
Business associations lobbied in support of SB 202, according to the state's Government Accountability Board. Groups like Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, and the Wisconsin Restaurant Association all backed a repeal.
Sara Finger, executive director of WAWH, said that the repeal was a "demoralizing attack on women’s rights, health, and wellbeing."
"Economic security is a women’s health issue," she said. "The salary women are paid directly affects the type and frequency of health care services they are able to access. At a time when women’s health services are becoming more expensive and harder to obtain, financial stability is essential to maintain steady access."
Walker is facing a recall election in June. The two frontrunners on the Democratic side who are competing to unseat him, former Dane County executive Kathleen Falk and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, sharply criticized the governor for allowing the repeal bill to become law.
Falk said Walker has "turned back the clock for women across Wisconsin."
"As a woman and as a mother who worked full-time while raising my son, I know first-hand how important pay equity and health care are to women across Wisconsin," she said in a statement to The Huffington Post.
A spokesman for Barrett's campaign said that Walker's "ideological civil war includes a war on women, and repeal today of this protection against pay discrimination is a major step backwards for Wisconsin values and basic fairness."
"Tom Barrett knows equal pay for equal work is essential, and failing to stand up for Wisconsin women in the workplace is yet another reason he [Walker] must be defeated this summer," he said.
UPDATE: 2:17 p.m. -- The Plum Line reports that President Barack Obama's campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith responded to Walker's repeal, calling on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination, to take a position on the issue.
"As he campaigned across Wisconsin, Mitt Romney repeatedly praised Governor Scott Walker's leadership, calling him a 'hero' and 'a man of courage,'" she said. "But with his signing yesterday of a bill make it harder for women to enforce in court their right to equal pay, Walker showed how far Republicans are willing to go to undermine not only women's health care, but also their economic security. Does Romney think women should have ability to take their bosses to court to get the same pay as their male coworkers? Or does he stand with Governor Walker against this?"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/06/scott-walker-wisconsin-equal-pay-law_n_1407329.html
NOW, can someone please tell me, with all the fuss is over contraception and birth control pills for women by republicans and their holier than though mentality, why then does medicare and most insurance co.’s pay for erectile dysfunction devices and some viagra for some of these same old farts that cannot get it up anymore in congress that continue to want to take women’s rights back to the stone age ??? if left up to the republicans, it will be an all white nation, with the men clubbing whatever woman he wants to take home at night. course newty and the mormons already believe in that. ...
The Pos-T-Vac Vacuum Therapy Device is covered by Medicare and most Insurances. The Pos-T-Vac Vacuum Therapy System is also FDA approved for managing Erectile Dysfunction. We work with your doctor to obtain your prescription, bill your insurance for you, and ship your Pos-T-Vac discreetly to your home with no charge for shipping so there are no up-front* out of pocket expenses.
http://www.northcoastmed.com/lp/postvac/?gclid=CIX296vepK8CFe4DQAod8g0fXQ
http://postvac.com/medicare/
some Part D standalone plans or Medicare Advantage Plans with Prescription Drug Coverage (MA-PD's) provide value added benefits which include Viagra. Go to the Medicare.gov website and enter your drug information and your zip code to see a list of plans in your area.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Does_medicare_pay_for_Viagra
If you enter a medication that is not covered by the Medicare Part D prescription drug program (such as Aspirin), then the system will list the drug, but show that the drug is over the counter (or OTC). The "Add Drug" button will be missing because OTC drugs cannot be added to your drug list. You may find that some prescription medications (such as Viagra®) that are not covered by the Medicare Part D program are still covered by some Medicare Part D plans as "Bonus Drugs". Bonus Drugs will not count toward your total Medicare Part D spending limits.
http://www.q1medicare.com/PartD-Medicare_PartDPlanFinderTutorial.php
TPM2012
Major Leagues: Team Obama Outmaneuvers Romney On Women
Benjy SarlinApril 12, 2012, 6:08 AM20439172
It took tens of millions of dollars, years of preparation and three months of primary contests, but Mitt Romney is finally the GOP’s presumptive nominee. Now comes the hard part.
Romney’s first day of the general election turned into a stark reminder that Obama will be a far tougher opponent than the poorly funded, disorganized candidates he battled in the primary. Romney was outmaneuvered and forced off message throughout the day — beginning with a morning press call in which the campaign was caught flat-footed over a simple question about Romney’s position on the Lilly Ledbetter Act — overshadowing the economic message he was trying to push, with the gleeful help of an armada of professional Democratic operatives.
The new Republican standard-bearer began the morning on FOX News on the defensive, pushing back against Democrats’ claim of a Republican “war on women” by blaming Obama for slow job growth among women.
“His polices have been really a war on women,” Romney said. “Over 92 percent of the jobs lost under this president were lost by women.”
The move was a classic example of what has become a consistent Romney maneuver: projecting his own vulnerabilities onto his opponent, in this case his toxic polling with women voters. But Romney’s move quickly revealed the dangers of playing on your opponent’s territory.
A group of Romney advisers held a conference call immediately after the Fox News interview in which they repeated Romney’s “92 percent” claim and lamented the “enormous damage” done to women under Obama. But when three reporters asked the logical follow up — why are there fewer jobs for men in recent months and what would Romney do to fix the gender gap in hiring? — they were unable to offer any explanation. Another obvious follow-up question, “Does Romney support the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which makes it easier for women to sue over pay discrimination and was Obama’s first signed law?” generated only a long, awkward pause before an aide finally responded: “We’ll get back to you on that.”
The Democratic machine sprang into action. Operatives jumped on the Ledbetter line, sending it out to supporters and media and urging Romney to detail his position. Before Romney’s campaign could even clarify, the Obama campaign had already produced a lengthy statement from Ledbetter herself, describing how “shocked and disappointed” she was by the ambiguity. Democrats had also distributed a copy of the audio from the Romney camp’s phone call.
The Romney campaign, which was trying to shift the discussion to its preferred topic of jobs, instead was forced to backpedal on equal pay, an issue on which the GOP is on much shakier ground with women voters. A spokeswoman for the Romney campaign told TPM he supported “pay equity” but as for the bill itself, she’d only say that the candidate is “not looking to change current law.”
That put Romney on the other side of the overwhelming majority of Republican lawmakers, who almost unanimously opposed the bill’s passage in 2009.
National and state Democrats sent out dozens of press releases on Ledbetter within hours.
“For the president, equal pay for equal work has always been a no- brainer,” DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said in a conference call with bloggers. “Meanwhile on a question that shouldn’t have required a millisecond of hesitation, Mitt Romney’s aides responded with a deafening six-second silence followed by, ‘We’ll get back to you on that.’”
By then, the Romney campaign was firmly on defense, issuing statements from female supporters attesting to Romney’s commitment to “pay equity” and repeating the party line that Obama’s economic policies are worse for women. Democratic operatives, again with lightning speed, instantly noted that two such statements came from congresswomen who voted against the Ledbetter law, Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Mary Bono Mack.
Meanwhile, Romney’s “92 percent” statistic was also taking a beating. The Romney camp ended the day struggling to defend the number which, while technically accurate, was almost universally judged misleading by independent analysis, as there were clear economic reasons behind the gender gap that had nothing to do with Obama, and, again, Romney offered no coherent explanation as to why the disparity existed or how he would change the ratio himself. By the late afternoon, Romney’s aides were publicly demanding that Politifact — hardly the only outlet to criticize the claim — retract its article judging the line “mostly false,” wading into a distracting process fight rather than touting the jobs message they’d planned to champion all day. Politifact agreed to a review, but noted correctly that many outlets reached the same conclusion, including the Washington Post and AP.
The closest Romney came to regaining footing was launching an all-out grievance war Wednesday night on a Democratic pundit who appeared on CNN. Hillary Rosen, who has no connection to the Obama campaign, awkwardly suggested Ann Romney can’t fully understand working mothers because she “never worked a day in her life.” Ann Romney herself joined Twitter just to respond, which helped give the story legs and at least forced actual Obama aides like David Axelrod and Jim Messina off the sideline to quickly condemn the remark.
As difficult a time Romney had overcoming a parade of challengers to take the GOP nomination, the episode underscored just how much tougher the general election will be. Democrats have built a finely tuned — and loud — messaging and research operation. And Romney, for the first time in more than five years, had to navigate an electorate that included more than just base Republicans, abandoning his party’s near-unanimous stance on a pay-equity bill in order to avoid doing even more damage to his already anemic share on women voters. His opponents have more cash then him for now to boot, a situation completely alien to Romney, who outspent his nearest primary competitor at 5:1 clip.
Twenty-four hours after Santorum’s exit, the scoreboard shows Obama 1, Romney 0.
2012, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/04/major-leagues-team-obama-outmaneuvers-romney-on-women.php
Will the GOP's 'war on women' hurt Mitt Romney in November?
By Meghan Holbrook, ksl.com Contributor
SALT LAKE CITY -- In a national presidential election that was supposed to be all about the economy, gender politics have become a significant issue. A recent USA Today-Gallup poll taken in a dozen battleground states showed that among independent women — a key group of swing voters — President Obama took a 14-point lead over Mitt Romney, marking a net gain of 19 points in just a few months.
Romney leads among all men by a single point, but (President Obama) leads among women by 18 (points). That reflects a greater disparity between the views of men and women than the 12-point gender gap in the 2008 election. -USA Today Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus compared the so-called Republican "war on women" to a "war on caterpillars," as something created by Democrats and the mainstream media to mislead the public. However, whatever it is called, some in the GOP seem bent on rolling back women's rights to affordable health care, reliable contraception, and safe termination of pregnancies caused by rape and incest. And many women are concerned.
Although the GOP may not think it is fighting a "war on women," its female senators do. Recently, United States Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) joined Senators Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) in criticizing the GOP's push for legislation to restrict access to contraception and other basic health care services for women.
Senator Murkowski said, "It makes no sense to make this attack on women. If you don't feel this is an attack, you need to go home and talk to your wife and your daughters."
Senator Murkowski also spoke out against Rush Limbaugh's attack on Sandra Fluke, adding, "To have those kinds of slurs against a woman … [we] had candidates who want to be our president not say, ‘That's wrong. That's offensive.' They did not condemn the rhetoric."
Neil Newhouse, the lead pollster for Mitt Romney, said his candidate's recent problems with women probably represent fallout from arguments that women have been hearing from Congressional Republicans about contraception and other women's issues. Although Newhouse doesn't think so, this could become an electoral problem for the GOP presidential candidate in November.
http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=757&sid=19930959
Wisconsin State Senator Says Women Are Paid Less Because ‘Money Is More Important For Men’
By Travis Waldron on Apr 9, 2012 at 3:07 pm
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) quietly repealed his state’s equal pay law last week, a decision that will make it harder for victims of wage discrimination to sue for lost earnings and back wages. The law was enacted primarily to address the massive pay gap that exists between male and female workers, which is even bigger in Wisconsin than in other states.
Repealing the law was a no-brainer for state Sen. Glenn Grothman (R), who led the effort because of his belief that pay discrimination is a myth driven by liberal women’s groups. Ignoring multiple studies showing that the pay gap exists, Grothman blamed females for prioritizing childrearing and homemaking instead of money, saying, “Money is more important for men,” The Daily Beast reports:
Whatever gaps exist, he insists, stem from women’s decision to prioritize childrearing over their careers. “Take a hypothetical husband and wife who are both lawyers,” he says. “But the husband is working 50 or 60 hours a week, going all out, making 200 grand a year. The woman takes time off, raises kids, is not go go go. Now they’re 50 years old. The husband is making 200 grand a year, the woman is making 40 grand a year. It wasn’t discrimination. There was a different sense of urgency in each person.” [...]
Grothman doesn’t accept these studies. When I ran the numbers by him, he replied, “The American Association of University Women is a pretty liberal group.” Nor, he argued, does its conclusion take into account other factors, like “goals in life. You could argue that money is more important for men. I think a guy in their first job, maybe because they expect to be a breadwinner someday, may be a little more money-conscious. To attribute everything to a so-called bias in the workplace is just not true.”
Among Grothman’s inaccuracies is the idea that only males “expect to be a breadwinner someday.” In two-thirds of American families, women are either primary or co-breadwinners, and yet they still earn less than their male counterparts in all 50 states.
In 2011, the Wisconsin GOP carried out an extensive war on workers that led to recall efforts for state representatives, senators, and Walker himself. In 2012, Grothman and his colleagues have expanded that war to one on women, meaning a group of workers that was already struggling to keep pace with their male counterparts is only going to fall further behind.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/04/09/460917/wisconsin-state-senator-money-less-important-wome/?mobile=nc
Scott Walker Quietly Repeals Wisconsin Equal Pay Law
Posted: 04/ 6/2012 12:09 pm Updated: 04/ 6/2012 2:19 pm
WASHINGTON -- A Wisconsin law that made it easier for victims of wage discrimination to have their day in court was repealed on Thursday, after Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) quietly signed the bill.
The 2009 Equal Pay Enforcement Act was meant to deter employers from discriminating against certain groups by giving workers more avenues via which to press charges. Among other provisions, it allows individuals to plead their cases in the less costly, more accessible state circuit court system, rather than just in federal court.
In November, the state Senate approved SB 202, which rolled back this provision. On February, the Assembly did the same. Both were party-line votes in Republican-controlled chambers.
SB 202 was sent to Walker on March 29. He had, according to the state constitution, six days to act on the bill. The deadline was 5:00 p.m. on Thursday. The governor quietly signed the bill into law on Thursday, according to the Legislative Reference Bureau, and it is now called Act 219.
Walker's office did not return repeated requests for comment.
State Sen. Dave Hansen (D-Green Bay) and Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee), the authors of the Equal Pay Enforcement Act, criticized Walker on Thursday for not informing the public of his actions on SB 202.
“We are finally starting to see progress here in Wisconsin, yet like their counterparts across the country, Legislative Republicans want to turn back the clock on women’s rights in the workplace,” said Hansen.
Women earn 77 cents for every dollar that men make. In Wisconsin, it's 75 cents, according to the Wisconsin Alliance for Women’s Health (WAWH), which also estimates that families in the state "lose more than $4,000 per year due to unequal pay."
Business associations lobbied in support of SB 202, according to the state's Government Accountability Board. Groups like Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, and the Wisconsin Restaurant Association all backed a repeal.
Sara Finger, executive director of WAWH, said that the repeal was a "demoralizing attack on women’s rights, health, and wellbeing."
"Economic security is a women’s health issue," she said. "The salary women are paid directly affects the type and frequency of health care services they are able to access. At a time when women’s health services are becoming more expensive and harder to obtain, financial stability is essential to maintain steady access."
Walker is facing a recall election in June. The two frontrunners on the Democratic side who are competing to unseat him, former Dane County executive Kathleen Falk and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, sharply criticized the governor for allowing the repeal bill to become law.
Falk said Walker has "turned back the clock for women across Wisconsin."
"As a woman and as a mother who worked full-time while raising my son, I know first-hand how important pay equity and health care are to women across Wisconsin," she said in a statement to The Huffington Post.
A spokesman for Barrett's campaign said that Walker's "ideological civil war includes a war on women, and repeal today of this protection against pay discrimination is a major step backwards for Wisconsin values and basic fairness."
"Tom Barrett knows equal pay for equal work is essential, and failing to stand up for Wisconsin women in the workplace is yet another reason he [Walker] must be defeated this summer," he said.
UPDATE: 2:17 p.m. -- The Plum Line reports that President Barack Obama's campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith responded to Walker's repeal, calling on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination, to take a position on the issue.
"As he campaigned across Wisconsin, Mitt Romney repeatedly praised Governor Scott Walker's leadership, calling him a 'hero' and 'a man of courage,'" she said. "But with his signing yesterday of a bill make it harder for women to enforce in court their right to equal pay, Walker showed how far Republicans are willing to go to undermine not only women's health care, but also their economic security. Does Romney think women should have ability to take their bosses to court to get the same pay as their male coworkers? Or does he stand with Governor Walker against this?"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/06/scott-walker-wisconsin-equal-pay-law_n_1407329.html
NOW, can someone please tell me, with all the fuss is over contraception and birth control pills for women by republicans and their holier than though mentality, why then does medicare and most insurance co.’s pay for erectile dysfunction devices and some viagra for some of these same old farts that cannot get it up anymore in congress that continue to want to take women’s rights back to the stone age ??? if left up to the republicans, it will be an all white nation, with the men clubbing whatever woman he wants to take home at night. course newty and the mormons already believe in that. ...
The Pos-T-Vac Vacuum Therapy Device is covered by Medicare and most Insurances. The Pos-T-Vac Vacuum Therapy System is also FDA approved for managing Erectile Dysfunction. We work with your doctor to obtain your prescription, bill your insurance for you, and ship your Pos-T-Vac discreetly to your home with no charge for shipping so there are no up-front* out of pocket expenses.
http://www.northcoastmed.com/lp/postvac/?gclid=CIX296vepK8CFe4DQAod8g0fXQ
http://postvac.com/medicare/
some Part D standalone plans or Medicare Advantage Plans with Prescription Drug Coverage (MA-PD's) provide value added benefits which include Viagra. Go to the Medicare.gov website and enter your drug information and your zip code to see a list of plans in your area.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Does_medicare_pay_for_Viagra
If you enter a medication that is not covered by the Medicare Part D prescription drug program (such as Aspirin), then the system will list the drug, but show that the drug is over the counter (or OTC). The "Add Drug" button will be missing because OTC drugs cannot be added to your drug list. You may find that some prescription medications (such as Viagra®) that are not covered by the Medicare Part D program are still covered by some Medicare Part D plans as "Bonus Drugs". Bonus Drugs will not count toward your total Medicare Part D spending limits.
http://www.q1medicare.com/PartD-Medicare_PartDPlanFinderTutorial.php