Senator Boettger says “poop”

There was a bit of debate in the Iowa Senate today about making hay and pitching manure. The exchange came as Senator Nancy Boettger was asking Senator Staci Appel about a pay equity bill – which later passed the senate.

"I"m looking at it in terms of a farmer…Many farmers have four regular employees, but then maybe at haying season or time to clean out the lots, they might be hiring some high school students or maybe even a handicapped kid to help give him somewhat of a job.  It looks to me that this bill would require equal pay for all those folks," Boettger said as a sort of question to Appel, the bill's floor manager.

"Yes," Appel quickly replied.  But there was another voice in the mix.  The microphone for Senator Mike Gronstal of Council Bluffs, the Democrats' leader in the senate, was opened.

"I apologize for blurting out, 'No!" Gronstal said, "but if you look at the bill what it does it has affirmative defenses and one of those affirmative defenses is a system which measures earning by quantity or quality of production. so if I can put up more hay than you can, Senator Boettger, then you can pay me more."

"Or scoop more poop?"  Boettger quickly asked.   There was a bit of giggling among the third graders, er, senators, then the debate resumed.