(Washington, D.C.) The following is a statement by National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) Co-President Nancy Duff Campbell on the budget for FY 2014 released today by House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).
“The Ryan budget is a shameful and irresponsible plan that balances the budget on the backs of women and their families by slashing programs that women especially count on to provide for their families. It would drastically cut the funding available for child care and Head Start, K-12 education and Pell grants, job training, civil rights enforcement, women’s preventive health care, domestic violence prevention and more. It would dismantle core safety net programs by turning Medicaid and SNAP (Food Stamps) into block grants and undermining Medicare with a new voucher program.
“The Ryan budget’s call to repeal the Affordable Care Act would deny up to 15 million women access to affordable health insurance and Medicaid. Women would pay more for prescription drugs in Medicare and for preventive health care, including contraceptive services. And repeal would allow insurance companies to continue charging women higher premiums than men, deny coverage to women with so-called pre-existing conditions like domestic violence, and refuse to cover maternity care.
“These cuts are even more outrageous because the Ryan budget simultaneously proposes to give massive new tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans and corporations by lowering the top individual and corporate tax rate to 25 percent. It’s a profoundly unbalanced and unfair plan that deserves to be dead on arrival.”
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