President Barack Obama, speaking at Valencia College in Orlando Thursday, laid out his opportunities agenda, while underscoring the importance of rewarding women equally for the work that they do.
Obama said, while women make up about half of the workforce they lag behind men in terms of pay and face inadequate family friendly workplace policies.
“When women make less than men, that hurts their families, including their partners, their husbands, their kids,” he said. “They’ve got less to get by on. It hurts businesses because now their customers have less to spend.”
Referring to the Paycheck Fairness Act currently before Congress, Obama challenged Republicans who have blocked the legislation to do the right thing.
“It’s time to do away with some of these workplace policies that belong in a “Mad Men” episode,” Obama said to laughter. “We’ve got to make sure that every woman has the opportunities that she deserves – because when women succeed, America succeeds.”
Mr. Obama again called on Congress to pass legislation that raises the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, which would increase wages for nearly 28 million Americans. “It would be good for business because …more customers have more money to spend. It will grow the economy for everybody,” he said.
The president closed his remarks on the Affordable Care Act which he said is already benefiting millions of women. He reminded of the open enrollment deadline of March 31, 2014, and urged those without health insurance who not already signed up to do so.
Obama mocked Republicans who had taken 50 votes in the House of Representatives in an attempt to repeal or undermine the Affordable Care Act.
“You know what they say – the 50th time is the charm,” he said, to laughter. “Fifty times. And it’s not just to try to improve the law or here’s a particular problem. No, we just want to scrap it so that millions of people who now have health insurance, we want them to go back to not having health insurance.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen. They can keep wasting their time repealing — trying to repeal the ACA; we’re going to keep working to make this law work better because every person and every woman deserves to control her own health care choices – not her boss, not her insurer, surely not Congress,” he added.
Before addressing the gathering of about 250 students, elected officials and other guests, Obama met a smaller group of students and counselors for a roundtable discussion.
Although no mention was made of the upcoming mid-term election, perhaps it is no accident that Mr. Obama is focusing on women and the economic and workplace issues they face. Women represent a central voting bloc and could hold the key in many close races, including whether the Democrats remain in control of the U.S. Senate.
In addition to Orlando, Mr. Obama will hold similar student forums in Denver, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston and New York City, in the lead up to the Working Families Summit which he will keynote in Washington, D.C. on June 23.
Mr. Obama left Orlando for Miami where he will attend two fundraisers that will benefit the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).
