If you ask around, it's pretty easy to find someone who has a bank account overdraft horror story to tell.

When I started working, women were working at 59 cents to the dollar. We got a raise, but it's still unfair. We're still 16 percent of Congress, even though we're 51 percent of the population. We're a low percentage of our CEOs. We're a low percentage of boards and being part of boards.

The only way to ensure equality for women is to clearly declare it in our Constitution.

In America, we have long stood by the principle that the protections of the law are not meant just for some.

We have not ratified The Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Among Women. I think 194 countries have signed onto it, but the United States has not. And CEDAW to the United Nations is what the Equal Rights Amendment or the women's equality amendment is to the United States. I think we should pass the women's equality amendment and a lot of these other fights would go away.

I was proud to be an original cosponsor of the Violence Against Women Act when Congress passed it in 1994, and was proud to support the previous renewals in 2000 and 2005. These bills always enjoyed large, bipartisan support.

Healthy moms mean healthy families. When my Republican colleagues held a hearing about birth control and refused to include a single woman on the first panel as a witness, I asked, "Where are the women?"