More hypocrisy from Team Obama

More "do as I say, not as I do" lovin' from His Royal Hypocrisy Senator Obama. The good senator is a vocal proponent on the campaign trail of "pay equity" for women. Senator Obama has even gone so far as to say that his Republican rival, John McCain is opposed "to equal pay for equal work."

Yet, according to National Review, it turns out Obama pays his female Senate staffers only 83 cents for every dollar he pays his male Senate staff. Of his top five highest paid staffers, only one is female. In the top twenty highest paid, only seven were women.

In contrast, Senator McCain pays his female Senate staff $1.04 for every dollar he pays his male staff members. Three of his top five highest paid advisors are women, and thirteen of his top twenty highest-paid staffers are women.

From the National Review article:

Obama’s commitment to federally mandated pay equity stretches from the Rockies to Wall Street and beyond. And yet it seems to have eluded his United States Senate office. Compensation figures for his legislative staff reveal that Obama pays women just 83 cents for every dollar his men make.
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On average, Obama’s female staffers earn just 83 cents for every dollar his male staffers make. This figure certainly exceeds the 77-cent threshold that Obama’s campaign website condemns. However, 83 cents do not equal $1. In spite of this 17-cent gap between Obama’s rhetoric and reality, he chose to chide GOP presidential contender John McCain on this issue.
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On average, according to these data, women in John McCain’s office make $1.04 for every dollar a man makes. In fact, ceteris paribus, a typical female staffer could earn 21 cents more per dollar paid to her male counterpart — while adding $10,726 to her annual income — by leaving Barack Obama’s office and going to work for John McCain.
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In short, these statistics suggest that John McCain is more than fair with his female employees, while Barack Obama — at the expense of the women who work for him — quietly perpetuates the very same pay-equity divide that he loudly denounces. Of all people, the Democratic standard bearer should understand that equal pay begins at home.

Now, lots of legitimate factors exist that may result in pay disparities between the sexes, and thus caution is advised whenever we examine conclusions from a fairly broad-brush analysis such as used in the cited article, particularly from such a small dataset. The fact remains, however, that Senator McCain employs a greater percentage of women on his Senate staff, in greater positions of responsibility (as indicated by their higher salaries) than does Senator Obama. Once again, McCain's actions trump Obama's lofty rhetoric.