Julie Vogtman, Senior Counsel

Yesterday we reported that House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) had introduced a tax bill – referred to as “Plan B” – that protects most tax cuts for the richest two percent, ends improvements in tax credits for hardworking families, and does nothing to help two million jobless workers who are about to lose federal unemployment benefits. The House is scheduled to vote on this disastrous bill tonight.

But wait, there’s more! The House is now also scheduled to vote on an amendment introduced by Rep. Mulvaney (R-SC) that would make Plan B even more dangerous for women and their families by adding harmful spending cuts to the unfair tax policies in the bill. The Mulvaney amendment is nearly identical to a bill passed by the House passed in the spring, which would avoid the automatic cuts scheduled to begin in January for the remainder of FY 2013 – but only by replacing those across-the-board cuts with deep cuts targeted to many programs that women and their families especially depend on. So here are my top five reasons why the Mulvaney amendment makes a bad bill much, much worse:

1. It slashes funding for health care. Among other cuts that would hamper implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the amendment would reduce access to affordable coverage by discouraging the use of premium tax credits designed to help people pay for health insurance. The amendment also allows states to restrict their eligibility standards for Medicaid, which could reduce eligibility or benefits for millions – especially women, who disproportionately rely on Medicaid for health care coverage.

2. It cuts nutrition assistance for low-income families. Cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP/food stamps) in the amendment would reduce monthly benefits almost immediately for about 44 million people and deny benefits altogether for as many as 2 million more. In addition, about 280,000 low-income children would lose access to free meals at school.

One year ago, President Obama announced new regulations proposed by the Department of Labor (DOL) that would grant minimum wage and overtime pay to home care workers, a workforce that has been unfairly denied these basic protections for decades. In his remarks last December, he described a day he spent with Pauline Beck, a home care worker from Oakland, California:

“When we met, she was getting up every day at 5:00 a.m. to go to work taking care of an 86-year-old amputee named ‘Mr. John.’ And each day, she’d dress Mr. John and help him into his wheelchair. She’d make him breakfast. She’d scrub his floors. She’d clean his bathroom. She was his connection to the outside world. And when the workday was done, she would go home to take care of a grandnephew and two foster children who didn’t have families of their own. Heroic work, and hard work. That’s what Pauline was all about.”

Pauline’s story is illustrative. Like Pauline, most home care workers are women. They take on the vitally important work of caring for our neighbors and family members who need help to stay in their homes – and like Pauline, many home care workers also have their own families to support. But for decades, their difficult and demanding jobs have come without the basic protections of the federal minimum wage and overtime laws.