I’m watching CNN and the Republicans have decided that today is the day to come out against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, branding it the “trial lawyer bailout” and accusing Obama of trying to overturn the Supreme Court decision
WTF is wrong with these people? First of all, the Court decision was wrong. Second, even if it wasn’t, their justification was that there was insufficient evidence of Congressional intent to apply the law in this way. Basically, they sent the issue back to Congress to resolve. The way our system works, that means that if the President and Congress want to fix the problem, they have an open invitation.
And finally, they can’t really believe that passing this law is going to hurt the economy. They just can’t. Which means this is some sort of political posturing, which means they think that this tactic is going to obtain them some public reward. Which, in turn, means that they have learned nothing from the election results of the past two years. They think it’s going to get them more votes to come out against popular legislation to codify a common-sense approach to combating gender discrimination? Really? And even more, they think that “oh noes! the economy!” is going to offer some sort of blank check that lets them explain away all of their preposterous positions?
UPDATE: Here’s the video. The guy talking is John Ensign, and the relevant section is about a minute in.