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Did Hillary Clinton pay women less? Guess again, mister

The Republican National Committee chairman said 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.

RNC chairman Reince Priebus based his claim on a report by the Washington Free Beacon of publicly available expense reports submitted biannually to the secretary of the Senate. Looking at median salaries among full-time, year-round employees, the Free Beacon concluded that women working in Clinton's Senate office were paid 72 cents for each dollar paid to men.

Pushing back against that analysis, the Clinton campaign provided FactCheck.org a list of the names, titles and annual salaries of every full-time person employed in Clinton's Senate office between 2002 and 2008. The data show the median salary for men and women to be the same at $40,000. The data also show Clinton hired roughly twice as many women as men.

"There are many different ways to measure these things and you will get slightly different answers," said Eileen Patten, a research analyst at the Pew Research Center. "It's not that either data set is flawed. They just show different things."

So what accounts for the difference between the two sets of findings?

"Salaries of employees who were not part of Clinton's office for a full fiscal year were not included," the Free Beacon report states.

According to the salaries provided by the Clinton campaign - which includes anyone who even worked part of the year, the median for all seven years combined showed median salaries for men and women to be the same. The Clinton campaign has a good point: Not counting those who worked only part of the year results in a wide pay gap for women in Clinton's office. As the data show, heavy turnover in the office together with movement between Senate and campaign staffs can make a big difference when comparing salaries in Clinton's Senate office.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is skeptical of human-caused climate change. While he's unsure of the effect humans have on the climate, Rubio is certain that addressing the problem would wreck the economy.

Cap and trade is a simple concept: The government sets a cap on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. To comply, companies must either upgrade to cleaner technologies or purchase allowances to continue polluting.

Existing cap-and-trade programs haven't devastated their local economies. For example, an independent consulting firm looked at the economic impact of the group of Northeastern states engaged in a cap-and-trade program that has lowered emissions by 40 percent since 2005, and the results were positive. The 2011 analysis found that the program created $1.6 billion in value added to the regional economy. It also created 16,000 jobs, and residents collectively saved more than $1 billion on energy bills."

Europe, California, New England - they all have cap and trade, and nothing has been devastated," said Duke University energy policy professor Billy Pizer. "There is nothing about a generic cap and trade that is devastating. Existing cap-and-trade programs have not proven to be "devastating" in their economic impact."

While estimates for proposed programs vary, most experts and analysts have found modest potential impact on the economy; some even show a positive impact. Based on the evidence, Rubio can't be certain about the potential impact of cap and trade. Politifact rates his claim False.

Chip Tuthill lives in Mancos. Websites used: www.factcheck.org www.politifact.com