A fair wage for Mother’s Day

Mother’s’ Day has come and gone, but Utah Moms, despite an abundance of fresh flowers in their homes, still experience disadvantages that Moms across the United States don’t experience. Senators Hatch and Lee should account for this disparity. Since they won’t, here is a letter I imagined them sending out to Utah Moms over the special holiday weekend.

Dear Utah Working Moms,

Happy Mother’s Day. We want you to know just how much we appreciate you and understand how hard you work for your family.

With 41% of you as the primary breadwinners and another 22.5% of you as co-breadwinners, we appreciate you so much we are willing to pay you $.69 for every $1.00 we pay a man for doing the exact same job.

If you’re raising your family alone, things don’t look so good. As many as 55% of you single moms (depends on your ethnicity) may be living in poverty. But if you’re lucky enough to snag a man, that drops significantly. Did we mention he’ll get paid $1.00 for every $.69 you make–what a deal! Might we suggest match.com?

Even though 1 in 5 of you would get a raise if the federal minimum wage were increased to $10.10 per hour, we know you’ll understand why we had to vote no. Our commitment to big business interests and corporate profit is far more important than your ability to put food on the table for your children. Perhaps your employer can host an employee food drive like Walmart or create an unrealistic budget to help you better manage your money, like McDonald’s.

We know you’d like guaranteed paid sick and family leave but we couldn’t possibly infringe on those sacred corporate profits. Good news is only 1 in 5 of you low-wage moms have lost a job due to sickness or caring for a sick child. That still leaves 4 of you employed. 80% is a B grade, not too shabby.

There is also some good news for those of you receiving income assistance. England, France, and Germany all have higher rates of poverty than the U.S. Sure, people might point out that once you count the income assistance, we actually have the highest rate of poverty, by far, but that’s just math and math is hard. By the way, did we mention that Sweden is one of the lowest? But they are socialists, afterall.

While we know that the Affordable Care Act Obamacare has given all mothers access to maternity coverage, don’t worry. We’re still fighting Medicaid expansion so you won’t have to mess with all that paperwork once the baby is actually born. And rest assured, we’ll keep voting to overturn Obamacare again soon. At last, something we can all get behind.

Finally, we hope you enjoy this Mother’s Day–a day established by President Woodrow Wilson–the same president who gave all you women the right to vote (actually, Wilson opposed suffrage, it was individual states and Congress that voted to ratify the 19th amendment after a decades-long struggle).

Working hard or hardly working to earn your tax dollars,

The Honorable Senator Orrin Hatch

The Honorable Senator Mike Lee

Statistics are from the National Women’s Law Center: http://halfinten.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Mothers-Poverty-Opportunity-Profile.pdf