• Today we are finishing our 24th day of the 2014 Legislative Session.  By the end of session on Tuesday we have to have all the Senate Bills out of the Senate and on the way to the House.  They also have to finish their bills and send them over to us.  In the process a lot of bills have been eliminated and others move on for more debate, amendment, and votes.  It is a great process and every bill has its day in front of a committee where it gets a good hearing where the public can testify.     
• One issue that our caucus has raised this week is the wage gap between men and women.  In South Dakota, on average, a woman who holds a full-time job is paid $31,329 per year while a man who holds a full-time job is paid $40,285 per year.  This means that women in South Dakota are paid 78 cents for every dollar paid to men, amounting to a yearly gap of $8,956 be

tween men and women.
• As a group, women who are employed full time in SD lose approximately $1.2 billion every year due to the wage gap. If the wage gap were eliminated, a working woman in SD would have enough money for approximately: 75 more weeks of food, 8 more months of mortgage and utilities, or 15 more months of rent. 
• Low wages in South Dakota affect all families, but especially those 31,454 households in our state headed by women. About 34% of those households (10,789 households) have incomes that fall below the poverty level. Medicaid Expansion would positively affect these women who live one accident or illness away from bankruptcy.   Currently, a working woman does not qualify for Medicaid unless she earns just 52% or below of the federal poverty level. Stuck in the "gap" of working full time or even in multiple jobs to provide for her family, she earns too much to qualify for Medicaid and too little to pay for her own health insurance.
• Medicaid Expansion is a decision controlled by the super majority party and continues to be resisted at every turn despite Democrat's best efforts.  We absolutely believe that SD should fully expand Medicaid to help the working poor but to also produce a huge economic benefit to the state of SD. 
• Women are involved in education decisions for our state at many levels. From advocating for preschool, before and after school programs, k-12 funding, Career and Technical Education (CTE) and higher ed.
• A study done by the South Dakota Afterschool Partnership reminded us that 86% of SD women with school-age children are in the labor force. And among mothers of

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