Michael Barone: “The Democrats’ problem is that sex discrimination by employers was outlawed by the Equal Pay Act signed by John Kennedy in 1963 – 51 years ago. To make ‘the war on women’ an issue and rally single women to the polls, the Obama Democrats have had to concoct new legislation putting new burdens on small employers and ginning up business, as the 2009 Lilly Ledbetter Act’s extended statute of limitations did, for their trial lawyer contributors. Such legislation attacks a problem very largely solved. The male-female pay differential for those working at similar levels has been reduced nearly, but not quite, to the vanishing point. Remaining differences result almost entirely from personal choices by women and men. … By any realistic standard the equal pay problem is minor, certainly in comparison to the growth-stifling effects of the current tax code and the unsustainable trajectory of current entitlement programs. But this president, unlike his two predecessors, has chosen not to address such major problems in his second term.”