Obama Should Start At Home When It Comes To Pay Inequality.

Obama Rolls Out Pen And Phone Today To Take On ‘Income Inequality’

April 8, 2014 by Ben Bullard 

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President Barack Obama’s announced pen-and-phone gambit in January may have simply been his way of telling people how he’s planning to use his position to help set up Congressional Democrats for re-election in 2014.

This week, Obama will bring his power of executive order to bear in two anticipated actions that both focus on a favorite election-season talking point for Democrats: income inequality.

Obama is expected to sign an executive order today requiring the Department of Labor to establish new regulations that force Federal contractors to give the government detailed information about the demographic makeup of the employees they pay — including information about employees’ race and gender as a function of how much they’re paid.

In February, Obama issued an executive order requiring Federal contractors to pay their employees a minimum of $10.10 per hour as the first of several promised White House initiatives this year intended to whittle away at income inequality, which Obama has identified as a societal problem that progressivists in the Democratic Party are especially qualified to solve.

Obama is also expected to sign an executive order today that forbids Federal contractors from reprimanding employees who publicly discuss their pay.

The signings, announced to media ahead of April 8 in anticipation of “Equal Pay Day.” Every year since 1996, the National Committee on Pay Equity estimates how much longer women must work into the new year in order to earn the same amount of compensation that men earned by the close of the previous year.

“The White House did not respond Monday to questions about whether it will issue a report dissecting how men and women, or a variety of racial groups, fare in its salary pool,” reported David Martosko of the Daily Mail. “That may be because 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has never paid the same levels of earnings to men and women — not even in the current administration.”

According to an analysis by The Daily Caller of last year’s Report to Congress on White House Staff, the Obama Administration paid females 11.8 percent less than males in 2013 — an improvement over the previous year, when female staffers were paid 18 percent less.