Ryan’s budget – and women

As with the first rounds of Ryan budgeting, this one would be bad for nearly everyone (except perhaps the wealthy), but it would especially take an enormous toll on the country’s women.

Medicaid

Women depend heavily on Medicaid. They make up 70 percent of its beneficiaries, which means 19 million low-income women have access to health care.

Obamacare

Ryan also promises to repeal the Affordable Care Act. While he doesn’t want to repeal cuts to Medicare spending included in the act, he does promise to repeal the benefits, perhaps the biggest of which is the Medicaid expansion. Women would reap huge benefits from the expansion of Medicaid, given that 13.5 million were expected to get health coverage that way by 2016.

Other provisions that women have been benefitting from in the ACA: the end to gender rating, which was costing women an extra $1 billion a year; access to preventive care without a co-pay, netting a woman around $11,000 now that she doesn’t have to pay a co-pay for contraception, among other things; getting rid of “pre-existing conditions” like pregnancy and domestic violence; and many other great benefits. All out the window if Ryan gets his way.

Medicare

As with Medicaid, the majority of Medicare beneficiaries are women. Women live longer than men, but they also are far more likely to live in poverty in their old age, with twice as many women over age 65 in poverty compared to men.

Food stamps

Women rely on food stamps to feed themselves and their families. They are more than 60 percent of adult SNAP (the food stamp program) recipients and over 65 percent of elderly recipients. More than half of the households that rely on SNAP benefits are headed by a single adult, nearly all women.

Discretionary spending

Ryan’s tax reforms would lead to the federal government losing out on $7 trillion in revenue, mostly with tax breaks aimed at the rich and corporations. But at the same time, he promises to balance the budget in ten years. To get there, he’ll cut spending by $5.7 trillion compared to the current baseline (which, let’s remember, is already so low that it’s cutting into vital programs). These cuts won’t fall evenly on defense and non-defense spending – he actually increases defense spending compared to current law by $500 billion over the same time period.

Yet discretionary spending will be cut by more than $200 billion. Ryan would extend the Budget Control Act caps, which is already set to cut $1.5 trillion in discretionary spending. Women benefit enormously from the programs funded by this spending. Over 80 percent of the households that receive Housing Choice Voucher rental assistance are headed by women. The Women, Infants and Children program, or WIC, helps 9 million low-income mothers and children with supplemental nutrition and health care referrals. Programs like childcare assistance and Head Start are also funded through this money. All would stand to see huge cuts.

– Excerpts from an article written for The Nation by Bryce Covert