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Loading ...Senate hearing on domestic partner benefits
09.24.2008 5:02pm EDT
(Washington) The Senate held its first-ever hearing Wednesday on the issue of partner benefits for federal employees.
The landmark hearing was called by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and titled “Domestic Partner Benefits for Federal Employees: Fair Policy and Good Business.” It was coordinated by Committee Chair Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Ranking Member Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME).The hearing is considered an important and necessary step toward enactment of equal employment benefits for LGBT federal civilian employees.
“This legislation, which is long overdue, would bring the federal government up to the standards of America’s leading employers, who provide these benefits in order to recruit and retain the most talented workforce possible,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese, in written testimony submitted to the the committee.
“Equal pay for equal work is a value fundamental to American opportunity. The federal government should be the standard bearer for fair workplace practices. As long it denies gay and lesbian employees the comprehensive family benefits that their heterosexual colleagues receive, the federal government will fall short of that standard, and continue to lag behind the nation’s top employers.”
The benefits for federal employees would include family health insurance, pension and survivor benefits and relocation expenses for families who are transferred. And for State Department employees abroad it would include access to anti-terrorism and language training, medical facilities, and evacuation services.
“I welcome this Senate hearing and consider it one more step in our march toward full equality,” said Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) who authors the companion bill, H.R. 4838, in the House.
“Only when we eliminate discriminatory practices in the workplace will we allow both employees and businesses to reach their full potential. As an employer, the federal government must not only set an example, but must compete with corporate America for the best-qualified workforce. Offering domestic partner benefits is a means toward both ends.”
I’d love to see this get through Congress, but I don’t hold out much hope of that. And even if it does, Bush would veto, McCain would veto, and Obama would probably veto too.
If it looks like a bone, smells like a bone,tastes like a bone, it is only a bone. IT will get buried.
If it looks like a bone, smells like a bone,and tastes like a bone, it’s a bone. It will get buried like all the others.
This could be accomplished by repealing DOMA and would have a much greater positive effect for all Americans and not just Federal employees.
My benefits here at work (for a government contractor) define a “spouse” per DOMA. I receive no benefits for my husband. If the federal employees start receiving benefits, perhaps someday I will.
If you want to get rid of vermin, take away their place to live.
Guy in SF said:
“This could be accomplished by repealing DOMA and would have a much greater positive effect for all Americans and not just Federal employees.”
Perhaps if Proposition 8 in California and Proposition 2 in Florida are defeated, and then a major “class-action” court case to the Supreme court from some other state, and the Supreme Court decides in favor of same-sex marriage. That will take a long long time because the courts work so slow.
I think we need the federal domestic partner benefits nationwide right now until the courts decide in our favor. It will put pressure on the states to repeal their anti-same-sex measures.
Better yet, since marriage is merely a “federally-regulated” contract (since the late 1923), perhaps we need to make all states change marriage to a civil union, and let the religious bigots keep the name “marriage”.
And guess what will happen, everyone will call their “civil union” contract “marriage”, because it is easier to say, and the whole situation is diffused.
mommy, are those people spies…?
Opinionator,
sorry, civil unions are currenly nice, but highly ignored, by employers, insurance companies. but the only currency the entire world understands is marriage and only marriage is portable around the world. As it stands in the real world, even civil unions are not fully respected in the states where enacted and you are like a fish floundering out of water out of its supportive environment if you wil. Same with civil unions, the instant you and your partner step put your two feet outside of your civil union state and crows the border into a neighboring non-civll union state, you and your partner’s relationship is no longer recognized and you are as “legal strangers to each other”.
Foreign countries mostly understand marriages not civil unions.
Sorry, but your idea of changing all marriages inro civil unions will not work. And noone will for having his or her marriage relabeled without their consent into an inferior civil union status wihtout lausuits and huge amounts of anger.
Not workable.
This is a great step in the right direction. My partner and myself are Fed.Employees and we have a 9yr. son, she has just recieved a transfer and at this point our family is divided due to lack of partnership benefits. I hope something will really come of this.
The bill in the House is not H.R.4838, it’s H.R.2517.