Women and the U.S. Budget

Taxing Women

Although so much public policy has been implemented through the tax code in the last twenty years, we still have a murky understanding of how this has changed our lives. Essentially, the tax system has been used to re-distribute wealth upward.

There has been very little written about the impact of the tax system on women, so it is exciting that earlier this month the National Council for Research on Women (NCRW) issued the report "Taxes ARE a Women's Issue: Reframing The Debate" by Mimi Abramovitz and Sandra Morgen. The Council is a network made up of over 100 leading U.S. women's research and policy centers.

Sunset Commission Threatens Budget Programs

President Bush is determined to leave his mark on the federal budget process and outcomes, and not just through disastrous tax cuts, billions of dollars for the war in Iraq, and huge deficits. In a move that has received little attention from the media, he has proposed a way to bypass elected representatives and subject a wide range of federal programs to possible elimination. In a letter to Congress on April 5, members of nonprofit groups such as the AFL-CIO, Environmental Defense, Center for Science in the Public Interest, Sierra Club, YWCA USA, and Public Citizen reported that “the proposals could create a single unelected commission to review every federal program, and would mandate that all federal programs automatically "sunset"--completely cease--after a fixed period, unless Congress intervened.”

Gender Responsive Budgets

The following are excerpts from my article, “Gender Responsive Budgeting.” featured in the May/June issue of Dollars and Sense: The Magazine of Economic Justice. Click this link for the full PDF of the article or better yet, support Dollars and Sense by buying the magazine. (To see the articles in the May/June issue go to www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2006/0506toc.html)

Terms that are referenced in the full text of the article are defined at the end.

...Today, gender responsive budgeting is happening in over 60 countries, including Sri Lanka, Tanzania, the UK, Bangladesh, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Chile, and India. Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez recently announced his commitment to including gender equality principles in the national budget for this fiscal year.

Line Item Veto is Looming

President Bush is continuing his grabs for increased presidential powers by proposing the Line Item Veto Act of 2006. This is a direct threat to the constitutional separation of powers and will likely result in cuts to programs of vital importance to women, children, and working people and increased deficits. It also directly challenges Congress’ responsibility for the budget.

For more information and to take action by sending a message to your representatives, go to People for the American Way (PFAW) web site:

http://actions. pfaw.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx? c=enJHKINrFqG&b=848149&aid=6734 

For National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) testimony on the impact of the Line Item Veto Act of 2006 go to:

www.nwlc.org/pdf/MartinFir vidaTestimonyLineItemVetoApr06.pdf 

Accountability & Transparency

I guess the public is getting really sick of hearing about the government contract game and its consequences, particularly in the middle of a war in which Americans and Iraqis are dying while military and security corporations are thriving. The evidence confirming this is the Senate’s move toward making government contracts available for viewing on the web! This sort of thing – blatant transparency about the use of taxpayer money – doesn’t usually happen without public anger rising. Perhaps the four no-bid FEMA contracts for post Katrina housing contributed to this outrage too.

The bill – the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (S. 2590) - was introduced by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Barack Obama (D-IL) with lots of co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle. It calls for “the existence and operation of a single updated searchable database website accessible by the public at no cost that includes for each entity receiving Federal funding...”. With the ease of a Google search, taxpayers could get information on government contracts, grants, insurance, loans and financial assistance worth $2.5 trillion of their money.

Incomplete Budget

This year the congressional leadership decided to devote 72 days (a little over two months) to legislative business. This is the least amount of time spent on legislative business over the past twenty years. The results are reflected in the budget update below. 

October 1 is the start of the fiscal year so the budget for Fiscal Year 2007 is supposed to be finished, but Congress has decided to wait to make some of the hard budget decisions until the politically volatile election season is over. This continues the “governance by continuing resolution” syndrome. A continuing resolution is not so great for budget programs, because continuing to fund them at current levels usually means at significantly lower levels than under a full budget process.

Democratic Gains Spur Hope

The recent election results were a devastating indictment of the political status quo in our country. It has become very difficult to beat incumbents in Congress, so it really did require an uprising of energy, money and conviction to create those results.

One clear thing emerged from the elections: the gender gap is back. "If only men voted, Jim Webb (D-VA), Jon Tester (D-MT), and Claire McCaskill (D- MO) would have lost, and the Republicans would still control the Senate," said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation and publisher of Ms. Magazine. "In the 2006 election, in key races, women were the deciders."

Women's votes also led the way in key House races. According to the Ms. Magazine/Women Donors Network (WDN) nationwide exit poll, 55 percent of women voted for Democratic candidates while only 50 percent of men voted for Democrats, for a 5-point gender gap. In close races, this was the decisive margin (full press release).

Support Grows for National Health Care Legislation

We all know horror stories of people in this wealthy country who suffer health crises because they cannot afford health insurance. Many workers who are fortunate enough to have health insurance pay a high percentage of their pay check for that coverage and are required to handle co-payments on top of that.

Due to the sweeping change in political power on Capitol Hill following the November elections, this is the best time we have seen in a decade to get national legislation to improve our health care system. What could be more important?

We are even fortunate enough to have a very dedicated and brilliant member of the House of Representatives who has studied this issue carefully, worked with organizations across the country, and has crafted legislation that would give us a single payer, not-for-profit health care system in the United States – H.R. 676. It would be funded on a sliding scale according to income.

What is Women and the U.S. Budget?

What is Women and the U.S. Budget?

A CRASH COURSE IN "BUDGET LITERACY" THAT UNCOVERS THE SECRETS HIDDEN IN THE NATIONAL BUDGET

Women and the U.S Budget: Where Your Money Goes and What You Can Do About It, written by Jane Midgley, published in September 2005 by New Society Publishers. The foreword was written by U.S. Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA).

Women and the U.S Budget

is a crash course in budget literacy for women and everyone who wants to understand and transform the use of our nation's common resources.