House of Cuts

Throwing Women under the Budget
On this week's Equal Pay Day we honored the ingenuity and hard work of every American woman, and recognized how much more women must do to ensure they earn what they deserve. Every year, women have to work more than 3 extra months in order to take home the same amount a man earned last year. However, once again, Senate Republicans this week voted to reject the core American value of equality. By halting progress on the Paycheck Fairness Act, they halted progress for businesses, consumers, and our economy, and undermined the notion that everyone deserves an honest day's pay for a full day's work, regardless of gender.

We know that when women succeed, America succeeds. Unfortunately, Republican Budget Chairman Paul Ryan's latest budget ignores this simple truth – it is a recipe for recession that disproportionately harms America's women. Instead of working to ensure that every woman is afforded the opportunities to reach her full potential, their latest plan balances the budget on the backs of women and cuts back on some of the historic progresses we have made.

Chairman Ryan's budget would:

• Repeal Protections and Benefits Millions of Women Enjoy Under ACA. Insurance companies would once again be allowed to treat being a woman as a "pre-existing condition", forcing women to pay more than men for the same health coverage. More than 47 million women would have to pay out-of-pocket for lifesaving preventive health care services, like mammograms and cervical cancer screenings. Millions more women and their families would be stripped of the private Marketplace health plans and the expanded Medicaid coverage they have obtained under the Affordable Care Act.
  
• Undermine Women's Economic Security. The Ryan budget cuts Food Stamps by $137 billion over the next 10 years, which would be devastating for millions of America's women, who make up 62 percent of adult Food Stamp recipients. At least 200,000 women and children would be dropped from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), if the GOP's 15 percent cut in non-defense appropriations in 2016 was applied across-the-board.
  
• Punish Women Seniors and Cut Health Benefits to Give Tax Breaks to Millionaires. The budget would increase senior women's prescription drug costs by re-opening the Medicare coverage gap, or "donut hole", closed by Democrats in 2010 under the Affordable Care Act. As a result, seniors in the ‘donut hole' will be forced to pay an additional $18,000 on average for their Rx drugs over 10 years. With women making up nearly 70 percent of Medicaid's adult beneficiaries, the $732 billion cut to Medicaid over 10 years or by nearly 25 percent in 2024 would disproportionately affect women.
  

The Ryan budget fails women on all measures – it fails to call for equal pay for equal work; it fails to call for increasing the minimum wage; and it fails to respect women's health and economic security. Democrats have a better budget approach - one that will create jobs, strengthen the middle class, invest in our infrastructure and our children's education, close the opportunity gap, and responsibly reduce the deficit. American women deserve a budget that will help them achieve the economic security that our country needs and they so rightfully deserve.

Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi lays out exactly why
Chairman Ryan's budget must be rejected.

No Excuse
The Senate took a responsible step forward this week – passing a bill in a bipartisan manner to restore emergency unemployment insurance. Now, it is time for the House to follow suit, and for House Republicans to drop their steadfast opposition to the unemployment insurance extension.

Speaker Boehner's refusal to bring up the unemployment insurance extension leaves more than two million men and women out in the cold – with thousands joining their ranks each day. These Americans worked hard, played by the rules, and lost their jobs through no fault of their own. As they seek new work, they've lost an essential lifeline to help them endure the crisis of unemployment, to ensure they can pay the bills, cover the mortgage, put food on the table, and make ends meet. As long as unemployment insurance is not renewed, our economy will lose jobs, and consumers and businesses will suffer.

Democrats have offered our colleagues across the aisle multiple opportunities to do the right thing and restore unemployment insurance. We have put forward a petition to demand a vote on this measure immediately. But Republicans still say ‘no.' With the Senate's approval of this measure, there is no excuse for inaction. It's long past time to renew unemployment insurance.