In South Carolina today, Hillary Clinton proposed solutions to end the growing wage gap between men and women in America that is hurting our economy and keeping so many Americans from reaching their full potential. Republican operatives tried in vain to revive an old, repeatedly debunked attack on Hillary Clinton – all to distract from their own contenders, such as Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, who have repeatedly opposed a woman’s right to equal pay.
CLAIM: The RNC repeated a debunked claim today that Hillary Clinton paid women less than men in her Senate office.
REALITY: Hillary Clinton paid women and men equally in her Senate office.
FactCheck.org: “Data provided by the Clinton campaign show median salaries for men and women in Clinton’s office were virtually identical.” “The Republican National Committee chairman says Hillary Clinton paid women in her Senate office less than men. But annual salary data provided by the Clinton campaign show median salaries for men and women in Clinton’s office were virtually identical.” [FactCheck.org, 4/22/15]
From 2002 – 2008, the median salary for staffers at Hillary Clinton’s Senate office and related Clinton groups was the same for both men and women. “Hillary Clinton paid women and men equally as a U.S. senator, according to a review of internal salary information that shows full-time female and male staffers from her Senate office and three political committees making a dollar for dollar. Clinton, who has been a longtime advocate of equal pay for women, is expected to launch a second presidential bid on Sunday — and has, along with senior aides, spent recent weeks building her campaign staff, to be headquartered in Brooklyn. The compensation data, obtained by BuzzFeed News, spans from 2002 to 2008 — a period covering every full fiscal year of Clinton’s tenure as the junior senator from New York. Staffers included were on the payroll of either the Senate office or Clinton’s political entities from that time period: Friends of Hillary, Hill PAC, and Hillary Clinton for President. (The data also shows one staffer who worked jointly for Clinton and a Senate committee.) The review of annual salary numbers, which are not publicly available, shows that over the seven-year period, the median salary for both men and women working for Clinton was $43,000. (That number addresses the total pool of employees, regardless of the years in which they worked. The median salaries for each year are different, but the median of the yearly figures is also equal for men and women: $40,000.)” [BuzzFeed, 4/11/15]
PolitiFact rated the claim that Hillary Clinton paid her female staffers less than male staffers “Mostly False.” “Is Hillary Clinton a hypocrite when it comes to equal pay? That’s the question raised by some conservative commentators after a Washington Free Beacon story said Clinton paid her female Senate staffers 72 cents for every dollar earned by a male counterpart. As Fox News host Sean Hannity put it: ‘As senator, she actually paid female staffers a lot less than the men.’ […] Hannity’s claim includes an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate this claim Mostly False.” [PolitiFact, 5/21/15]