McCain’s solution to the gender gap? Women should get an education

Hey, ladies! Are you tired of making 77 cents on the dollar to your male counterparts? Are you tired of waiting for the year 2050 when, at the current rate of salary increases, women might finally catch up to men in pay, according to the AFL-CIO?

John McCain has a solution for you. Get some education and training, darn it!

We’re starting to wonder if the Straight Talk Express is really an elaborate time machine that can jettison its inhabitants back to the Eishenhower era. What else can explain a penchant for ideology plucked from the days before there was a talking box in living rooms?

Last week, McCain failed to show up on the Senate floor to vote on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would make it easier for victims of pay discrimination to file lawsuits in court. McCain, from the campaign trail of straight-talk, said the act would lead to “lawsuits for all kinds of problems.” And then he offered this nugget regarding women and pay disparity: “They need the education and training, particularly since more and more women are heads of their households…”

McCain apparently isn’t educated himself on a number of issues: According to the Department of Education, men are less likely than women to get bachelor’s degrees. In fact, women have outnumbered men on college campuses for more than 25 years. And women also receive higher grades than men.

Still, McCain is hardly one to tout his support of education and training. When he does show up to vote (he has missed 58 percent of Senate votes in the 110th Congress, according to MSNBC), he’s voted against providing affordable tuition and equal access to education. In fact, he was one of 18 Republicans who voted against the College Cost Reduction Act of 2007, which would provide interest-rate reductions, student-loan increases and support for working students. And he voted against a budget resolution that would increase student-aid programs, increase the Pell grant minimum, and restore job programs and training by closing $6.3 billion in corporate-tax loopholes.

Momsrising.org is responding by organizing a Fair Pay petition and calling on women to send McCain their resumes. Now if only somebody would show me how to pull myself up by my bootstraps, I could shatter the glass ceiling with my pretty little head.