WASHINGTON, DC — In this week’s address, the President highlighted the progress our economy is making, and the commonsense policies that could make it even stronger by ensuring that everyone who works hard has the opportunity to get ahead, especially women and working families. This commitment has been a core part of the President’s Year of Action and a priority since the start of his administration, which is why he has put forth a range of policies that would help women and working families get ahead, from raising the minimum wage, to ensuring equal pay for equal work, to increasing access to high-quality child care and paid family leave. This week’s address follows remarks the President delivered on Friday at Rhode Island College, where he discussed the importance of harnessing our economy’s momentum by making policy choices that will help women and all working parents fully participate in and contribute to our economy.
Showing posts with label women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label women. Show all posts
Saturday, November 1, 2014
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
The Shutdown in New Jersey
The following is from Congressman Rush Holt's newsletter:
About 31,000 New Jerseyans work for the federal government. Many of these public servants have been furloughed; the remainder are continuing to perform their duties but will not be paid until Congress funds the government. As a result, Moody’s Analytics estimates that a three-to-four week shutdown would cut economic growth nationwide by more than half in the fourth quarter.
Due to the shutdown, the Children’s Home Society – which administers the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program in Mercer County – could not write any food or milk vouchers last week, impacting several thousand women and their families. The state of New Jersey has since stepped forward to support WIC temporarily, but if the shutdown continues, more children could lose access to basic nutrition.
At Rutgers Cooperative Extension, 60 staff members are about to be laid off due to funding shortfalls related to the shutdown. New small business loans, including those for New Jersey’s nearly 200,000 small businesses, are being halted. New student loans for New Jersey’s 440,000 college students are not being disbursed. New applications for Social Security, veterans’ benefits, visas, and passports are not being processed.
These problems will only grow worse if this shutdown is allowed to continue. And if the debt ceiling crisis is not resolved, the increased cost to the government could easily be in the tens of billions of dollars each year.
For Generations
Today Republicans in the House are stalling and filling time while they find the courage to admit they have made a big mistake, substantively and politically, in shutting the federal government and to bring to the floor a resolution to resume funding. So, they are using time to bring up a version of the farm bill that would leave more Americans hungry by reducing SNAP benefits (previously known as food stamps).
According to the Lancet Medical Journal published this past week, “SNAP is in jeopardy, which means American children’s health is in jeopardy.” More than 70 percent of SNAP benefits go to households with children. The program, dating from the 1960s, has been shown to have less waste, fraud, and erroneous awards than other government programs.
The Lancet article continues, “Many studies have shown positive associations between receipt of SNAP and... a lower risk of anemia, obesity, poor health, hospital admission for failure to thrive, and reports of child abuse and neglect. Children aged 5 - 9 years of SNAP-participating families had better academic outcomes and less obesity than had children of non-participating families... Between 1961 and 1975, the programme was implemented county by county, thus, allowing for comparison across counties that differed only by SNAP availability. In SNAP-available counties there was… a significant increase... in mean birthweight [an important measure associated with infant health] for both black and white Americans compared with those counties where SNAP was not available. Children of low-income women in SNAP-available counties were less likely to have metabolic syndrome [ill health such as diabetes] in adulthood, and women who had received food stamps during early childhood were more likely to be economically self-sufficient.”
This seems to me to be a very important point: the societal benefits of food stamps extend far beyond the temporary reduction of hunger pangs, and the benefits last for years, even into the next generation.
Sincerely,
Rush Holt
About 31,000 New Jerseyans work for the federal government. Many of these public servants have been furloughed; the remainder are continuing to perform their duties but will not be paid until Congress funds the government. As a result, Moody’s Analytics estimates that a three-to-four week shutdown would cut economic growth nationwide by more than half in the fourth quarter.
Due to the shutdown, the Children’s Home Society – which administers the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program in Mercer County – could not write any food or milk vouchers last week, impacting several thousand women and their families. The state of New Jersey has since stepped forward to support WIC temporarily, but if the shutdown continues, more children could lose access to basic nutrition.
At Rutgers Cooperative Extension, 60 staff members are about to be laid off due to funding shortfalls related to the shutdown. New small business loans, including those for New Jersey’s nearly 200,000 small businesses, are being halted. New student loans for New Jersey’s 440,000 college students are not being disbursed. New applications for Social Security, veterans’ benefits, visas, and passports are not being processed.
These problems will only grow worse if this shutdown is allowed to continue. And if the debt ceiling crisis is not resolved, the increased cost to the government could easily be in the tens of billions of dollars each year.
For Generations
Today Republicans in the House are stalling and filling time while they find the courage to admit they have made a big mistake, substantively and politically, in shutting the federal government and to bring to the floor a resolution to resume funding. So, they are using time to bring up a version of the farm bill that would leave more Americans hungry by reducing SNAP benefits (previously known as food stamps).
According to the Lancet Medical Journal published this past week, “SNAP is in jeopardy, which means American children’s health is in jeopardy.” More than 70 percent of SNAP benefits go to households with children. The program, dating from the 1960s, has been shown to have less waste, fraud, and erroneous awards than other government programs.
The Lancet article continues, “Many studies have shown positive associations between receipt of SNAP and... a lower risk of anemia, obesity, poor health, hospital admission for failure to thrive, and reports of child abuse and neglect. Children aged 5 - 9 years of SNAP-participating families had better academic outcomes and less obesity than had children of non-participating families... Between 1961 and 1975, the programme was implemented county by county, thus, allowing for comparison across counties that differed only by SNAP availability. In SNAP-available counties there was… a significant increase... in mean birthweight [an important measure associated with infant health] for both black and white Americans compared with those counties where SNAP was not available. Children of low-income women in SNAP-available counties were less likely to have metabolic syndrome [ill health such as diabetes] in adulthood, and women who had received food stamps during early childhood were more likely to be economically self-sufficient.”
This seems to me to be a very important point: the societal benefits of food stamps extend far beyond the temporary reduction of hunger pangs, and the benefits last for years, even into the next generation.
Sincerely,
Rush Holt
Saturday, June 8, 2013
Christie Out-of-Touch With Women
Joshua Henne wrote this Op-ed piece that appeared on PolitickerNJ last week. It talks about Governor Christie's real record when it comes to women.
By Joshua Henne
June 3rd, 2013
Today, Chris Christie is keynoting the Governor’s Conference For Women in Trenton. Perhaps he should do more listening and less talking. Because while folks might say that Christie is a fighter, he’s made it painfully clear he’s not fighting for New Jersey’s women. In fact, he’s the one holding them back when it comes to both their health and fiscal well-being.
There’s nothing moderate about the extreme, right-wing, anti-woman agenda our state has borne witness to these past few years. Christie’s knuckle-dragging decisions and out-of-step ideology are hurting women and their families.
It’s been this way right from the jump. In 2010, Christie eliminated $7.4 million in his very first budget for basic reproductive healthcare services. This money included life-saving cancer screenings, pap tests and breast health services. In 2009, these funds helped over 136,000 patients. Last year, New Jersey’s family planning providers saw at least 33,000 fewer people – a 24% drop. On Christie’s watch, six such centers have closed due to state cuts. Some patients immediately lost services and didn’t have access to other providers. Others experienced longer wait times or were forced to pay more out-of-pocket. The number of clinical breast exams alone performed at these providers fell from 70,506 in 2009 to 48,441 in 2012 – a 31% plunge.
Christie has since vetoed attempts to restore women’s health funding…four times. He claimed the state was broke. But just don't look too close into the palm of Christie’s hand - as he protects a tax break for multi-millionaires, doles out over $2 billion in corporate subsidies and proposed $540 million in business tax cuts. It’s clear where his priorities lie, and it’s not with the women and families of New Jersey.
Rather than reflect Jersey values, Christie is firmly in line with the most severe fringe on women’s rights. He’s the state’s first governor to oppose abortion rights since Roe v. Wade, and was the first to ever speak at Trenton’s annual pro-life rally. It’s no surprise Christie defunded Planned Parenthood and hopscotched the country supporting extremist Republican candidates who would outlaw abortion in the cases of rape and incest. In fact, he endorsed a North Dakota Senate candidate who voted to make it a felony to perform an abortion.
It isn’t only health where Christie fails to have women’s best interests at heart. He’s also trying to buttress the glass ceiling with cement. Christie vetoed legislation making it illegal for companies to pay women less for the same work as their male counterparts. He even supported allowing this discrimination at companies hired by the state with New Jerseyans’ hard-earned tax dollars. Apparently, Christie simply doesn’t believe in equal pay for equal work.
Moreover, when Christie vetoed increasing the minimum wage, he prevented hundreds of thousands of women working low-wage jobs from getting a modest raise. And when Christie cut the Earned Income Tax Credit – a program aimed at low-income workers – women disproportionately felt the pinch. It’s no surprise there are more women who have fallen into poverty since Christie took office.
While his policies have been harsh, that’s not the sole way Christie has hammered women - as he’s said some pretty rude things, as well. Let’s not forget when he beseeched reporters to “take the bat out on” State Senator Loretta Weinberg. Or when Christie called Assemblywoman Valerie Huttle “a jerk” for condemning his inappropriate use of the state police helicopter to watch his son’s baseball game and meet with Iowa fundraisers. Christie called Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver a liar despite evidence backing up her side of the story about trying to set up a meeting on property taxes.
Sadly, Christie’s hasn’t only lashed out at elected officials. At one of his taxpayer-funded town hall meetings - when a teacher pointed out that Christie demonizes teachers and only talks about how horrible schools are, while New Jersey is actually home to some of America’s best schools - Christie lambasted that she only wanted to “put on a show and giggle every time I talk.” He then condescendingly said “I have no interest in answering your question.” Then, during a live-call in show, when asked if its fair to defund public education while sending his own kids to private schools, Christie angrily snapped, ”Hey Gail, you know what? It’s none of your business.” And when a protester interrupted his speech at a Mitt Romney rally, Christie contemptuously sneered, “Something may go down tonight, but its not going to be jobs, sweetheart.”
One would think Christie would stop his bull in a china shop routine when it came to caring for the women of New Jersey. But alas, he’s consistently unleashed a double-barreled assault upon them. Through word, deed, partisanship and policy proposals, Christie’s treated the women of New Jersey with both mocking and malice.
What Christie says to women is pretty bad. What he’s doing to women is even worse, as he puts both their physical and economic health squarely in the crosshairs.
By Joshua Henne
June 3rd, 2013
Today, Chris Christie is keynoting the Governor’s Conference For Women in Trenton. Perhaps he should do more listening and less talking. Because while folks might say that Christie is a fighter, he’s made it painfully clear he’s not fighting for New Jersey’s women. In fact, he’s the one holding them back when it comes to both their health and fiscal well-being.
There’s nothing moderate about the extreme, right-wing, anti-woman agenda our state has borne witness to these past few years. Christie’s knuckle-dragging decisions and out-of-step ideology are hurting women and their families.
It’s been this way right from the jump. In 2010, Christie eliminated $7.4 million in his very first budget for basic reproductive healthcare services. This money included life-saving cancer screenings, pap tests and breast health services. In 2009, these funds helped over 136,000 patients. Last year, New Jersey’s family planning providers saw at least 33,000 fewer people – a 24% drop. On Christie’s watch, six such centers have closed due to state cuts. Some patients immediately lost services and didn’t have access to other providers. Others experienced longer wait times or were forced to pay more out-of-pocket. The number of clinical breast exams alone performed at these providers fell from 70,506 in 2009 to 48,441 in 2012 – a 31% plunge.
Christie has since vetoed attempts to restore women’s health funding…four times. He claimed the state was broke. But just don't look too close into the palm of Christie’s hand - as he protects a tax break for multi-millionaires, doles out over $2 billion in corporate subsidies and proposed $540 million in business tax cuts. It’s clear where his priorities lie, and it’s not with the women and families of New Jersey.
Rather than reflect Jersey values, Christie is firmly in line with the most severe fringe on women’s rights. He’s the state’s first governor to oppose abortion rights since Roe v. Wade, and was the first to ever speak at Trenton’s annual pro-life rally. It’s no surprise Christie defunded Planned Parenthood and hopscotched the country supporting extremist Republican candidates who would outlaw abortion in the cases of rape and incest. In fact, he endorsed a North Dakota Senate candidate who voted to make it a felony to perform an abortion.
It isn’t only health where Christie fails to have women’s best interests at heart. He’s also trying to buttress the glass ceiling with cement. Christie vetoed legislation making it illegal for companies to pay women less for the same work as their male counterparts. He even supported allowing this discrimination at companies hired by the state with New Jerseyans’ hard-earned tax dollars. Apparently, Christie simply doesn’t believe in equal pay for equal work.
Moreover, when Christie vetoed increasing the minimum wage, he prevented hundreds of thousands of women working low-wage jobs from getting a modest raise. And when Christie cut the Earned Income Tax Credit – a program aimed at low-income workers – women disproportionately felt the pinch. It’s no surprise there are more women who have fallen into poverty since Christie took office.
While his policies have been harsh, that’s not the sole way Christie has hammered women - as he’s said some pretty rude things, as well. Let’s not forget when he beseeched reporters to “take the bat out on” State Senator Loretta Weinberg. Or when Christie called Assemblywoman Valerie Huttle “a jerk” for condemning his inappropriate use of the state police helicopter to watch his son’s baseball game and meet with Iowa fundraisers. Christie called Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver a liar despite evidence backing up her side of the story about trying to set up a meeting on property taxes.
Sadly, Christie’s hasn’t only lashed out at elected officials. At one of his taxpayer-funded town hall meetings - when a teacher pointed out that Christie demonizes teachers and only talks about how horrible schools are, while New Jersey is actually home to some of America’s best schools - Christie lambasted that she only wanted to “put on a show and giggle every time I talk.” He then condescendingly said “I have no interest in answering your question.” Then, during a live-call in show, when asked if its fair to defund public education while sending his own kids to private schools, Christie angrily snapped, ”Hey Gail, you know what? It’s none of your business.” And when a protester interrupted his speech at a Mitt Romney rally, Christie contemptuously sneered, “Something may go down tonight, but its not going to be jobs, sweetheart.”
One would think Christie would stop his bull in a china shop routine when it came to caring for the women of New Jersey. But alas, he’s consistently unleashed a double-barreled assault upon them. Through word, deed, partisanship and policy proposals, Christie’s treated the women of New Jersey with both mocking and malice.
What Christie says to women is pretty bad. What he’s doing to women is even worse, as he puts both their physical and economic health squarely in the crosshairs.
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