By Heidi Reynolds-Stenson

In effort to reach a budget deal by the debt ceiling deadline on August 2, leaders in Congress have indicated they are willing to make cuts to vital programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The cuts would harm women and families who rely on these programs for their survival. In response, the Older Women’s Economic Security (OWES) Task Force of the National Council of Women’s Organizations (NCWO) launched a nationwide campaign, “Respect, Protect, Reject 2012.”

Through a public petition, the task force is asking lawmakers to respect women’s contributions to the economy and their need for economic security, protect Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other programs that are vital to women, and reject any budget plan that will impoverish vulnerable women and families. The task force wrote to congressional leaders on Tuesday to warn of the consequences of cuts to such programs for women and for the national economy and to urge the leaders to “place women’s circumstances and concerns at the center of their analysis and response.”

To help spread the word about the new campaign and bring more attention to these issues, NCWO held a conference call on Tuesday, July 12 moderated by NCWO Chair Susan Scanlan. On the call, Congresswoman Donna Edwards of Maryland’s 4^th District—who recently signed onto a letter with 69 other Democrats urging President Obama to oppose cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—emphasized that although the national debt clearly needs to be dealt with, it is important that it not be done at the expense of critical social safety net programs. She explained that for many of her constituents, women in particular, “Social Security is their security. Social Security is their groceries…It’s their day-to-day-expenses and so it’s not an option.”  

National Organization for Women (NOW) President Terry O’Neill reminded leaders to look not to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid when deciding how to reduce the national debt but to what is really contributing to the national debt— joblessness (because less jobs means less income tax revenue), Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy, and unfunded wars. She also shared a startling statistic—if the chained-CPI adjustment is made to Social Security, 73,400 more people will be in poverty by 2020 as a result, over 54,000 of which will be women.  Asked by a reporter if she thought everything should be on the table in the debt negotiations, O’Neill responded, “Emphatically, no. We do not agree.”

Joan Entmacher, Vice President for Family Economic Security at the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) brought attention to how much women have been suffering in the recovery since the end of the Great Recession.  While men have been gaining jobs since the end of the Great Recession, women have actually been losing jobs, mainly due to lay-offs in the public sector.  Cuts to vital programs will worsen an already difficult situation for women resulting from policies such as deregulation and taxes on the middle class.

Retired worker and member of the board for the Older Women’s League, Margie Metzler shared a moving personal story of what Social Security and Medicare have meant to her. Laid off at age 62, she found that no one was willing to hire an older woman. Without health insurance or family to support her, she began receiving Social Security, and then Medicare after she turned 65. Hearing talk of cuts to these programs terrifies Margie because she knows she has nothing to spare.  “The reality is they’re saying to me, ‘It’s perfectly fine if you just die.’”

Margie is committed to fighting for these programs that have been such a lifesaver for her and cautioned against reforms such as means-testing that might discourage women in need from applying for aid through programs such as Social Security. “I am not one of those people who says, ‘I have mine. I don’t care about the rest of you… I am going to be fighting for the people behind me,’” said Margie.  “From my standpoint, how can I feel anything but terrified and angry, but I also feel galvanized into action.”

Heidi Reynolds-Stenson is a Research Intern at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

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