[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 58 (Wednesday, April 9, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H3136-H3138]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
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THE IMPACT OF THE RYAN BUDGET ON AMERICA'S WOMEN
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Brooks of Indiana) Under the Speaker's
announced policy of January 3, 2013, the Chair recognizes the
gentlewoman from Maryland (Ms. Edwards) for 27 minutes as the designee
of the minority leader.
Ms. EDWARDS. I thank the gentleman for his remarks.
Madam Speaker, I want to rise this evening to discuss our annual
budget. Congress has a number of responsibilities, but a big one is
that Congress is tasked annually with developing a budget that lays out
our Nation's priorities in spending and lays out a budget that reflects
our values.
Democrats have been working to provide a fair shot for everyone to
succeed by creating good-paying jobs and an opportunity for working
families. Our country is, in fact, strongest when our economy grows
from the middle out, and not from the top down.
Unfortunately the fiscal year 2015 Republican budget introduced by
Paul Ryan takes the opposite approach. It benefits the few at the top
by showering tax breaks on millionaires and corporate special
interests, while shifting the burden of the Federal budget to middle
class families.
Once again, Mr. Ryan and Republicans have been convinced that the
best way to help working families is to stop helping working families.
Unfortunately, the Ryan budget resolution would actually harm families,
most especially, women and children.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, the Ryan budget would
cost jobs and slow our recovery, costing 1.1 million jobs in fiscal
year 2015, and rising to about 3 million in the following year.
Republicans are raising taxes on middle class families with children
by an average of at least $2,000 a year in order to cut taxes for
millionaires.
Now, let's just take a look at that, Madam Speaker. A recent analysis
by Citizens for Tax Justice finds that, under the Ryan plan, taxpayers
with income exceeding $1 million in 2015 would receive an average net
tax decrease of over $200,000 in that fiscal year.
Now, let's balance this. Families with children would have to pay an
additional $2,000, and millionaires would get the benefit of a decrease
in their taxes of $200,000. $2,000 for working families, and $200,000
for millionaires.
Now, of course, the Ryan budget doesn't touch tax breaks for big oil
and gas companies that ship jobs overseas. After all, you have to have
priorities, priorities and budgets that are a statement of values.
So it is very clear that the Ryan priorities and the Ryan budget
priorities benefit millionaires. It is very clear, unsurprisingly, that
the Ryan budget also repeals, yet again, the Affordable Care Act,
despite the fact that 9.3 million people now have health care as a
result of the Affordable Care Act, that according to a Rand Corporation
study.
Now, repealing the Affordable Care Act would allow insurance
companies, once again, to treat a woman and being a woman as a
preexisting condition, would once again enable insurance companies to
charge women more than men.
Insurance companies would also be able to deny women coverage because
of preexisting conditions, including a history of domestic violence,
breast and cervical cancer, and C-sections.
Under this budget, millions of women and their families would be
stripped of
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the private marketplace health plans and expanded Medicaid coverage
that they have obtained under the Affordable Care Act.
In fact, more than 47 million woman would again have to pay out-of-
pocket-costs for lifesaving preventive health services like mammograms
and cervical cancer screenings. Up to 4 million women seniors, that is
right, 4 million women seniors would fall, once again, into the
prescription drug doughnut hole, and they would have to start reaching
back into their pockets once again to pay for their prescription drugs
because the Ryan budget reopens the doughnut hole.
I want to repeat that for the American people. The Ryan budget
reopens the doughnut hole that Democrats closed. As a result, seniors
in the doughnut hole will pay an additional $18,000 over 10 years, on
average, for their prescription drugs.
Look, women make up about 55 percent of Medicare enrollees, and they
would suffer the most, frankly, when the Medicare guarantee is
replaced, under the Ryan budget, with a voucher in 2024.
That is right. The Ryan budget wants to change the Medicare system,
take away the Medicare guarantee for the 55 percent of the enrollees
who are women, for all enrollees, with premiums for traditional
Medicare going up about 50 percent on average. Think what that means
for America's women who are seniors.
Indeed, the Republican plan would draw traditional Medicare into a
death spiral. It would end it as we know it.
Not just that, but the Ryan budget also slashes Medicaid by $732
billion over 10 years, or nearly 25 percent in 2024, with the largest
impact on women.
I will continue, because the Ryan budget does such devastation to
America's women, that it bears repeating. But with that, I will yield
some time to my colleague from Nevada (Ms. Titus).
Ms. TITUS. Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my friend, Donna
Edwards for organizing tonight's important colloquy and Special Order
to talk about the Ryan Republican budget and its unacceptable impact on
women.
For the fourth year in a row, Chairman Ryan has proposed an
uncompromising budget plan that is out of touch with Nevada's
priorities and the country's vision for the future.
Chairman Ryan has used a lot of gimmicks in this budget, but no
amount of chicanery can hide what it means for women.
Instead of laying out a plan to strengthen and grow the middle class,
Representative Ryan's budget disproportionately harms low-income women
and the families they struggle to support. It also undermines the
health and economic security of the elderly and the disabled, most of
whom are women, as you have just pointed out.
It would repeal the Affordable Care Act and the critical protections
and benefits this landmark legislation offers to women. Millions of
women and their families would have to pay out of pocket for lifesaving
preventive health services such as mammograms and cervical cancer
screenings.
Insurance companies would be allowed, once again, to treat being a
woman as a preexisting condition. And over 200,000 women in Nevada
alone would lose access to affordable health insurance that is provided
by the ACA.
The Ryan budget also threatens a laundry list of vital programs that
help southern Nevada women and children, such as SNAP, WIC, Head Start,
TANF, and Pell grants, just to name a few.
Currently, over 75,000 Nevada women and children rely on WIC, and
358,000 Nevadans depend on SNAP, 154,000 of whom are children. In
addition, nearly 5,000 children in Nevada participate in Head Start,
and 33,000 Nevada students benefit from Pell grants.
Under the Ryan budget, women could lose access to these critical
programs, programs that help them put food on the table and give their
children access to the education they need to succeed.
The Ryan budget also eliminates the Brand USA program, which fosters
international tourism, an industry that employs many women in service
jobs in Nevada and around the country.
Instead of protecting women and children, Representative Ryan and the
Republican Party would rather provide the richest one-tenth of 1
percent, those households making more than $3.3 million a year, with a
$1.2 million tax cut.
Now, the Federal budget is a blueprint for our Nation's future. It is
a statement of our priorities as a Nation, and it should provide a path
forward that we can all be proud of.
My constituents in Las Vegas, and our constituents all around the
country, deserve better than this rehashed Ryan budget which slashes
programs for children, dismantles health care, eliminates the safety
net for seniors, and defunds education and needed research and
development.
This budget is not a road to prosperity, as Representative Ryan calls
it; it is a road to ruin. And as someone said recently, it is like
giving the middle finger to the middle class.
Instead, we need a balanced plan that protects women and their
families while making investments in our future. Let's work on that
kind of budget.
So, again, I want to thank my friends who have come to the floor
tonight to point out these problems.
I yield back to the gentlewoman from Maryland (Ms. Edwards).
Ms. EDWARDS. I thank the gentlewoman from Nevada for pointing out the
many ways in which the Ryan budget impacts the women of Nevada and
impacts the women of this country.
The gentlewoman mentioned something that I think, again, bears
repeating. The Ryan budget cuts food stamps by $137 billion over the
next 10 years, which would, in fact, be devastating for millions of
America's women, because 62 percent of adult food stamp recipients, in
fact, are women.
And at least 200,000 women and children would be dropped from the
special supplemental nutrition program for women, infants, and
children, if the 15 percent cut in 2016 non-defense appropriations was
applied across the board.
The Ryan budget calls for at least $500 billion in cuts to income
support programs like the earned income tax credit and the child tax
credit, unemployment insurance, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance
Program, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy
Families, and child nutrition programs, including school lunches. That
is right: taking food right out of the mouths of our youngest children
who need that nutrition in order to learn and be 21st century learners.
Sixty-six percent of individuals who depend on senior meals like
Meals on Wheels are women. Those senior meals would be cut by 15
percent in 2016, if the GOP cut in non-defense appropriations was
applied proportionately.
Up to 5.6 million women students would find college less affordable
due to $145 billion in cuts to Pell grants under the Ryan budget.
Up to 170,000 children would lose access to Head Start, and up to 3.4
million disadvantaged children at 8,000 schools would lose vital Title
I education programs.
I keep going on, and it seems incredibly devastating to America's
families and, particularly, to America's women. It is almost as though
the Ryan budget were a Mack truck just running right over top of
America's women.
Now, Democrats have an agenda and a budget that, in fact, reflects
our values of strengthening the middle class, of closing the
opportunity gap, of enabling women and their families to succeed. It is
a budget that helps women and families address some of the biggest
economic challenges facing them.
It calls for raising the Federal minimum wage, for ensuring equal pay
for equal work, for expanding family and medical leave, and for making
child care more affordable.
In my home State of Maryland, child care costs for an infant can run
to $12,936 a year for child care for one infant. In a lot of cases,
that is more than you pay for a 4-year institution, or a community
college, just to have your child in child care.
These are devastating for America's families. In fact, America's
families are spending 35 percent of their income, of their family's
income, in child care. That is more than we are spending on mortgages.
It is certainly more than we are saving, Madam Speaker.
As we know, women make on average just 77 cents on a dollar a man
makes. For African American women and Latinas, the gap is even larger.
African American women earn just 64 cents,
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and Latinas earn only 54 cents for every dollar earned by white, non-
Hispanic men.
Two-thirds of the minimum wage earners in this country are women, and
family and leave protections fail to cover nearly half of full-time
employees.
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The Democrats' budget, in fact, takes a look at these things and
says, you know what, people are working hard, and they are trying to
take care of themselves and their families; and, in fact, in this
country, with so many women who are either principal breadwinners or,
certainly, partner breadwinners in their families, the cuts envisioned
by the Ryan budget would be devastating for America's women.
We know that child care expenses, for example, that are important to
men and women are consuming so much of American families' income, and
yet the Ryan budget would take $2,000 away from working families and
enable millionaires to get the benefit of $200,000. Think about that--
your average family, $2,000; millionaires, $200,000.
According to the Ryan budget, the budget actually fails to call for
bills promoting equal pay for equal work for women. It fails to
increase the minimum wage. It fails to provide for paid sick days for
workers. The Ryan budget fails to help working families afford the cost
of child care.
We do have solutions, as Democrats, to these challenges. I mean,
after all, it is really true that, when women succeed, America
succeeds. Our agenda ensures that women will have the tools they need
to fully participate in the 21st century economy.
Madam Speaker, Republican priorities are making tax cuts for the
wealthy permanent, and they are shrinking the size of government,
regardless of the damage that it would cause.
As I have detailed, the Ryan budget doubles down on policies that, in
fact, hurt working families. I think that it is time, Madam Speaker,
for us to pay attention to what is happening to women--to women who are
increasingly in the workplace, but are saddled with the burden of
incomes that are not keeping pace, needing assistance to help them get
by, not because they are not working, not because they are not
contributing; and the Ryan budget does more devastation to America's
women.
So I would urge my colleagues to, once again, take a look at this and
to say, you know, in a country that has so much and that promises so
much and where there really should be more opportunity for all, that we
don't need a budget that just rips apart the lives of women and
children and families, and the Ryan budget does just that.
I look today at the Congressional Progressive Caucus alternative
budget. I voted for that because it is good for America. I looked at
this Congressional Black Caucus budget. I voted for that because it is
good for America.
I will look at the Democratic alternative to the devastating Ryan
budget because it is good for America. It is good for America's
families. It is good for America's women.
Madam Speaker, with that, I yield back the balance of my time.
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