Women earn just 77 cents to every $1 earned by men, proponents of new legislation say.

With a new poll may may have women once again moving toward Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the Senate’s Democratic majority leader is reminding female voters that the GOP hasn’t ended its “war on women.”

Although President Obama had opened up a huge 19-point advantage among women just weeks ago in the midst of the debates over birth control and other women’s issues, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that gap has shrunk to just 7 percent.

The “war on women” has been a potent rallying cry to attract more women voters to the Democratic side.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada took to the Senate floor Wednesday to remind voters about the earlier Republican battles against women’s health care and access to contraception, and to challenge GOP senators to support the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) reintroduced the legislation Tuesday.

“Although women make up nearly half of today’s workforce, they still earn only 77 cents on the dollar compared to their male colleagues,” Reid says. “And with an increasing number of women heading American households, this is a problem that affects children and families across the country.”

Reid calls the Senate Paycheck Fairness Act  “a logical extension of protections under the Equal Pay Act” which he says would help close the pay gap by helping women negotiate for equal pay and “creating strong incentives for employers to obey the laws already in place.”

Supporters of the Paycheck Fairness Act complain that despite current law, women are still blocked from knowing what their colleagues make. And when they fight for fair pay, they can lose their jobs.

In 19 of the 20 most common occupations for men or women, women earn less for the same work, those supporters say. In 264 of 265 major occupations, women’s median earnings are less than men, they add. And the pay gap costs women an average of $434,000 over their career, they say.

Mikulski, other Democratic senators, and independent advocates also held a separate press conference Wednesday to press for passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act. Mikulski made state-by-state data on the wage gap available online here.

Mikulski and others say her bill would build on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act signed into law by Obama in 2009, which overturned the 180-day statute of limitations for women to contest pay discrimination. The Ledbetter law was the first legislation that Obama signed into law once in office as president. The Paycheck Fairness Act will close the loopholes that allow pay discrimination to continue in the first place, they say.

“Republicans deny they’re waging a war on women, yet they’ve launched a series of attacks on women’s access to health care and contraception this year,” Reid says. “Now they have an opportunity to back up their excuses with action.

“I hope they take that opportunity, and join Democrats as we send a clear message that America values the incredible contributions women make every day,” he adds.

Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy denounced opposition to the controversial Protect IP Act as "a knee-jerk reaction."

Wednesday’s massive Internet protest against two controversial anti-piracy bills appeared to have some effect, as congressional leaders agreed to put off a vote on the legislation. However, it’s obvious that the fight isn’t over for opponents who contend the bills are so broadly written that they could lead to unchecked online censorship.

Although lawmakers bowed to the extraordinary pressure of Wednesday’s protest — in which many popular websites “went dark” in protest over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its Senate twin, the Protect IP Act (PIPA) — it’s clear they aren’t happy about it.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced Friday that he would delay the upcoming vote on PIPA.

“In light of recent events, I have decided to postpone Tuesday’s vote on the PROTECT I.P. Act,” Reid says.

He made clear that he expects the controversy to be resolved, however, and that the bill would eventually move forward.

“There is no reason that the legitimate issues raised by many about this bill cannot be resolved,” Reid adds. “Counterfeiting and piracy cost the American economy billions of dollars and thousands of jobs each year, with the movie industry alone supporting over 2.2 million jobs. We must take action to stop these illegal practices. We live in a country where people rightfully expect to be fairly compensated for a day’s work, whether that person is a miner in the high desert of Nevada, an independent band in New York City, or a union worker on the back lots of a California movie studio.

“I admire the work that [Senate Judiciary Committee] Chairman [Patrick] Leahy has put into this bill,” Reid says. “I encourage him to continue engaging with all stakeholders to forge a balance between protecting Americans’ intellectual property, and maintaining openness and innovation on the internet. We made good progress through the discussions we’ve held in recent days, and I am optimistic that we can reach a compromise in the coming weeks.”

‘Knee-Jerk Reaction’

Leahy, himself, took a more-defiant tone regarding the news of the vote delay, saying congressional opponents of PIPA were guilty of “a knee-jerk reaction.”

“I understand and respect Majority Leader Reid’s decision to seek consent to vitiate cloture on the motion to proceed to the PROTECT IP Act,” the Vermont Democrat says. “But the day will come when the Senators who forced this move will look back and realize they made a knee-jerk reaction to a monumental problem. Somewhere in China today, in Russia today, and in many other countries that do not respect American intellectual property, criminals who do nothing but peddle in counterfeit products and stolen American content are smugly watching how the United States Senate decided it was not even worth debating how to stop the overseas criminals from draining our economy.”

Leahy’s Republican House counterpart, Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, was somewhat more conciliatory in announcing a delay in a vote on SOPA, saying that “I take seriously” the concerns of critics who worry that the Domain Name System (DNS) blocking provisions of SOPA, in particular, could allow the federal government unchecked authority to shut down entire websites.

“The Committee will continue work with both copyright owners and Internet companies to develop proposals that combat online piracy and protect America’s intellectual property,” Smith says. “We welcome input from all organizations and individuals who have an honest difference of opinion about how best to address this widespread problem. The Committee remains committed to finding a solution to the problem of online piracy that protects American intellectual property and innovation.”

Scott Nance is the editor and publisher of the news site The Washington Current. He has covered Congress and the federal government for more than a decade.

Popular websites plan to "go dark" Wednesday to protest legislation known as SOPA.

Opponents of a bill targeting online piracy — but which they say could have far-reaching unintended consequences for Internet censorship — have made progress ahead of a planned web-based protest Wednesday.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, announced Friday that he would remove the controversial Domain Name System (DNS) blocking provision from the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), likewise, says that he would also modify the DNS provisions in the Senate companion, Protect IP Act (PIPA).

The DNS provisions, opponents argue, could allow the federal government to shut down entire websites without recourse.

Further, a bipartisan group of senators, including Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), also asked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid(D-Nev.) to delay consideration of PIPA, citing concerns that substantive issues in the legislation have not been addressed.

“PIPA and SOPA would inflict severe harm to the Internet and undermine our national interest,” says Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a chief opponent of the legislation. “The 11th-hour changes that the sponsors of the bills are proposing, and the letter of concern sent by Senator Grassley and others, are proof that both bills require further discussion and study before being considered by the House or the Senate. The DNS provisions in PIPA and SOPA are clearly unacceptable, but they are far from the only problems with the legislation.

“I agree with Senator Grassley and other senators that more time is needed to determine the best course of action that will narrowly target truly ‘rogue’ foreign websites without undermining speech and innovation,” Wyden adds.

Going Dark

Meanwhile, a number of popular websites, including Wikipedia and Reddit, plan to “go dark” on Wednesday to protest SOPA and PIPA.

Administors of Wikipedia, the well-known online encyclopedia, note that this will be the first time they have staged such a protest.

“In making this decision, Wikipedians will be criticized for seeming to abandon neutrality to take a political position. That’s a real, legitimate issue. We want people to trust Wikipedia, not worry that it is trying to propagandize them,” says Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation.

“But although Wikipedia’s articles are neutral, its existence is not. As Wikimedia Foundation board member Kat Walsh wrote on one of our mailing lists recently, We depend on a legal infrastructure that makes it possible for us to operate. And we depend on a legal infrastructure that also allows other sites to host user-contributed material, both information and expression,” Gardner adds. “For the most part, Wikimedia projects are organizing and summarizing and collecting the world’s knowledge. We’re putting it in context, and showing people how to make to sense of it.

“But that knowledge has to be published somewhere for anyone to find and use it. Where it can be censored without due process, it hurts the speaker, the public, and Wikimedia. Where you can only speak if you have sufficient resources to fight legal challenges, or if your views are pre-approved by someone who does, the same narrow set of ideas already popular will continue to be all anyone has meaningful access to,” she says.

Scott Nance is the editor and publisher of the news site The Washington Current. He has covered Congress and the federal government for more than a decade.

Senate Republicans who have been intensely devoted to tax cuts may find themselves this week on record in support of a big tax hike on the middle class.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced Monday plans to consider a bill to extend President Obama’s payroll tax cut which benefits 160 million American workers. Without an extension, those tax breaks will expire at the end of the year, however.

Sen. Bob Casey’s legislation not only would continue the existing 2-percent payroll tax cut for employees into next year, it would boost it to a 3.1-percent break. The legislation would also cut in half (from 6.2 percent to 3.1 percent) the employer-side Social Security payroll taxes, Democrats say.

Democrats also are quick to note that the extension of the payroll tax cut would not hurt the Social Security Trust Fund one penny, because it would require that the Social Security Trust Fund be reimbursed for the lost revenue.

The extended tax cuts also would not add to the budget deficit because they would be paid for with a 3.25-percent surtax on income over $1 million. It is that millionaire surtax, in which a wealthy taxpayer who makes $1.1 million would pay $3,250 more in taxes, which is likely to raise GOP ire.

Reid also surmises Republican opposition to the extension is due to partisanship because the payroll tax cut originally was President Obama’s idea.

“These are the same Republicans who loudly claim to care about keeping taxes low. But too often it seems they only care about keeping taxes low for the richest of the rich,” Reid says.

Reid anticipated Republican objection to the bill, and sought to tweak Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell a bit by noting that the average family in McConnell’s home state of Kentucky would keep $1,330 next year under the expanded payroll tax break. And 70,000 firms in Kentucky would benefit from new tax cuts, as well, Reid says.

“So let’s be clear what a ‘no’ vote on this proposal really means. It’s a vote to deny tax relief to millions of businesses. It’s a vote to raise taxes for 120 million families by nearly $1,000 each,” Reid adds. “Republicans who vote ‘no’ will literally be taking money out of the pockets of middle-class taxpayers.”

Reid cites economist Mark Zandi of Moody’s who predicts the U.S. economy will likely plunge back into recession if Congress does not extend this tax cut.

“It is clear neither our fragile middle class nor our fragile economic recovery can afford the kind of setback a failure to extend and expand these tax cuts would bring,” the majority leader says. “Republicans say we cannot afford to raise taxes. If they choose to oppose this payroll tax cut, we’ll know what they meant to say was, ‘We cannot afford to raise taxes on the rich –- but we are happy to raise taxes on the middle class.’”

UPDATE: In an interview with Bloomberg Television, Barclays analyst Michael Pond warns that letting the payroll tax cut expire could damage the economy by causing a drop in GDP of up to 1.5 percent.

WATCH VIDEO HERE:

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Scott Nance is the editor and publisher of the news site The Washington Current. He has covered Congress and the federal government for more than a decade.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid complains that Republicans are blocking legislation to re-hire teachers who have been laid off due to budget cuts.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pushed back Wednesday against his Republican colleagues over their opposition to a bill which would  put 400,000 teachers, police and firefighters back to work across the country.

The plan to put teachers and first responders back on the job was part of President Obama’s American Jobs Act, which GOP senators effectively killed last week in a procedural maneuver. Obama, however, declared he would not give up and vowed to try to move individual components of the jobs bill.

Senate Democrats now have started with the provision to provide federal funds to help states and local governments pay for teachers and other workers, calling it the Teachers and First Responders Back to Work Act.

In floor speech, Reid voiced his frustration that Republicans also object to this narrower legislation.

“Democrats’ number one priority is to create jobs. So to us, putting hundreds of thousands of people back to work teaching children, patrolling our streets and fighting fires constitutes a success,” says Reid (D-Nev.). “But Republicans’ number one priority is to defeat President Obama, and their strategy is to keep the economy weak as long as possible. So they oppose legislation we know beyond a shadow of a doubt will support 400,000 American jobs without adding a penny to the deficit.”

The bill would boost states and localities, which have laid off large numbers of teachers, firefighters and others as a result of declining tax revenue during the down economy.

Nearly 300,000 education jobs have been lost since 2008, and state and local budget crisis will put as many as 280,000 teacher jobs at risk next year, Democrats estimate. The Senate bill will more than offset projected layoffs, providing support for nearly 400,000 education jobs, they say.

“In Nevada, this legislation will provide an additional $260 million to keep teachers in the classroom and maintain class sizes. It will support 3,600 education jobs in the state, and pump much-needed money back into the economy,” Reid says.

He touts opinion poll results which find overwhelming public support for the legislation, including backing from Republicans nationwide.

“Seventy-five percent of Americans believe we should help state and local governments put teachers, police and firefighters back to work. And 76 percent of Americans agree the wealthiest people in this country should help get our economy back on track,” Reid says.

“I repeat: three out of four Americans – including two-thirds of Republicans – support the Democrats’ Teachers and First Responders Back to Work Act,” he adds. “Republicans in Congress aren’t just out of touch with America – they’re out of touch with other Republicans.”

A majority of Republicans even support the Democrats’ plan to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans to pay for the bill, Reid says.

“Republicans, like the rest of Americans, do not oppose our proposal to ask millionaires to contribute their fair share. On the contrary, they support the proposal,” he says. “It is only here in Congress that Republicans oppose job-creating legislation and fair tax policy for the sake of politics.”

 Scott Nance is the editor and publisher of the news site The Washington Current. He has covered Congress and the federal government for more than a decade.