Fisher: 1st GOP On Minnick Misfires

The same day, however, Minnick disproved the Republican Congressional Committee’s charge that he “took his marching orders from his Democrat leaders” by voting against a companion measure called the Paycheck Fairness Act. Minnick’s spokesman John Foster says Minnick was one of three Democrats opposing that bill because it provided for class-action lawsuits in which people had to “opt out” of the class, rather than choose to join it. As a former employer, Minnick found the provision unfair to businesses, Foster said./ Jim Fisher , Lewiston Tribune. Full Editorial below .

DFO: I consider our current delegation to be light-years better than the previous one, with shamed lame-duck Larry Craig and cantankerous Bill Sali. If Minnick does nothing more than to get Idaho wilderness bills through Congress, he will have accomplished far more than Sali. If Risch makes the U.S. Senate and the country forget about Craig, he’ll have accomplished much. It wasn’t that long ago that a national magazine ranked Simpson as one of the 10 best congressman. We now have a delegation we can be proud of.

The National Republican Congressional Committee might be right in assuming the new congressman from Idaho’s 1st District is one of the most vulnerable Democrats going into the next election cycle. But the committee is dead wrong if it thinks Walt Minnick is going to be a fat target.

Signs are he’s going to be among the skinniest of GOP targets.

This was revealed Friday when the committee issued a news release charging Minnick had voted for “a massive handout to trial lawyers by allowing for open-ended assurance of frivolous lawsuits relating to wage discrimination in the workplace.” The lameness of that charge was signaled by the release’s identification of the legislation in question as “the so-called ‘Fair Pay Act.’ ”

Whatever Republican hacks choose to call the bill, that isn’t what sponsors call a measure titled the “Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009.” But it isn’t hard to see why the GOP would not want to raise the name of the woman for whom the bill was named.

Lilly Ledbetter was an area manager for Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. who eventually learned she was making between 15 and 40 percent less than any man in the same position. In 2007, a 5-4 majority of the U.S. Supreme Court threw out her lawsuit because she had not filed it within 180 days of Goodyear’s first decision to pay her less. Ledbetter had been unaware of that decision until shortly before retiring after two decades on the job.

Friday, the House voted to nullify that decision, protecting other women - but not, unfortunately, Ledbetter - from covert discrimination in pay. And Minnick, to his credit, joined 243 other Democrats and three Republicans in voting yes.

The same day, however, Minnick disproved the Republican Congressional Committee’s charge that he “took his marching orders from his Democrat leaders” by voting against a companion measure called the Paycheck Fairness Act. Minnick’s spokesman John Foster says Minnick was one of three Democrats opposing that bill because it provided for class-action lawsuits in which people had to “opt out” of the class, rather than choose to join it. As a former employer, Minnick found the provision unfair to businesses, Foster said.

If you listen to the Republican Congressional Committee, though, requiring that women be paid the same as men doing the same work is equally unfair. In its release, the committee said “Minnick’s reckless decision to create a free flow of frivolous lawsuits is hardly in the best interests of America’s businesses or work force.”

Women in America’s businesses or work force might have a different view of that, of course. And thanks to the men who apparently run the National Republican Congressional Committee, one of the first questions to be asked of whomever their party selects to challenge Minnick in two years is whether he (or she) finds equal pay for women a frivolous matter. - J.F.