Clinton Aims to Close Wage Gap Between Sexes

WASHINGTON —  President Clinton said Saturday he wants to spend $14 million to help close the gap between men’s and women’s wages, and he pressed Congress to toughen enforcement of equal pay laws.

“When a woman is denied equal pay, it doesn’t just hurt her,” Clinton said in his weekly radio address. “It hurts her family, and that hurts America.”

Last summer, the president’s Council of Economic Advisors reported that women earn about 75 cents for every dollar a man earns--an improvement from the 58 cents on the dollar that women earned when President Kennedy signed the 1963 Equal Pay Act.

“We can be proud of this progress, but 75 cents on the dollar is still only three-quarters of the way there, and Americans can’t be satisfied until we’re all the way there,” Clinton said.

The proposal, part of the fiscal 2000 budget he will submit to Congress on Monday, would:

* Triple the number of enforcement workers at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

* Provide technical assistance to employers on how to comply with equal pay laws.

* Create public service announcements alerting women to their rights.

He urged Congress to pass, as one of its first acts this year, the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Meanwhile, in the weekly GOP broadcast, Gov. Frank Keating of Oklahoma credited his fellow Republicans with reducing welfare rolls.

“More Americans who were once trapped in a failed welfare system are achieving independence,” Keating said Saturday.

Keating gave as examples Wisconsin, where Gov. Tommy G. Thompson launched a welfare-overhaul movement in 1987 that reduced its welfare rolls by 90%, and Michigan, where he said Gov. John Engler has moved 200,000 families from welfare to work.