Share Your Story: The Flip Side of the Coin
How have domestic programs helped you or someone you know? Why is it important to you that Congress protect these programs?
- Head Start makes it possible for me to go to work, knowing that my daughter is cared for, safe and getting a jump start on her education.
- Without unemployment insurance, my family and I would never have been able to make our rent payment when I lost my job.
- I worked for 30 years, and Social Security has helped me stay afloat in retirement, without leaning too hard on my children for support.
- Medicaid and Medicare together provide my aging mother with the range of care she needs, including her long term care services.
Irresponsible spending cuts are threatening domestic programs that support low-income people like Social Security, Medicaid, Head Start, child care assistance, family planning, Pell Grants, housing assistance, maternal and child health care, Medicare, and unemployment insurance, and more. We know that cuts to these programs will have an extraordinarily harmful effect on women and families across the country. It's a price we can't afford to pay.
Hedge fund managers and CEOs with corporate jets are one side of the coin. The rest of us are the Flip Side of the Coin.
Please share with us how domestic programs have helped you and your family.
Please note: The views expressed in the stories below are those of the authors themselves and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the National Women's Law Center. All statements of fact in these stories have been provided by the individual authors, and the National Women's Law Center cannot and does not vouch for their accuracy. The Center will compile the stories and may use them, in whole or in part, in our advocacy efforts.
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Your Stories
Dorieta Rogers
Lubbock, TX, Retired builder and school counselor
We as all other Americans have paid into social security and medicare all our working lives. We saved for retirement but not enough and truly I am not sure what enough would have been. The government gave it's word that when we were to old/disabled to work we had a resource. If it is taken away living would become a constant worry and just forget about any kind of medical care. I know people who would be hurt much worse than we would and just the thought is despiciable. We all are Americans and we should all pay our fair share (not have loop holes to protect a few.) To long the burden has been borne by the poor and middle-class it is time every one steps up and pays and no longer be allowed to avoid paying
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Sher
Roanoke, VA,
This is easy to answer, without SS Disability and Meidcare, I would be dead. Its a familiar story, a loved job (college professor married to teaching) leading to severe disablity, leading to huge hospital bills to bankruptcy, while dealing with more near death experiences than I care to remember. Yet fourteen years later with the dedication of an independent Doctor, I live and like it, though the restrictions are often overwhelming, I know each day is a gift. The nightmarish stereotyping of person's with disabilities has been unbelievable, the bias and hatred is hard to face daily, yet life still has beauty. If these cuts so many seemingly want to make the last fourteen years rebuilding, letting going of things many take so forgranted, smart phone, newspapers...this computer is held together by grace...well, those years will have been for naught, homeless will be real, death probably, and as I write this how many others, those who serve in many ways this country and individual states who are hurt so badly they are 'retired', they are disabled yet live on with love and families and friends, what will their fate be?
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Mary Ann Freeman
Coatsburg, Illinois, teacher
My husband has had 5 different types of cancer and lost his leg 10 years ago due to the radiation and chemotherapy he received for the first cancer. He worked even after he lost his leg although he was often in severe pain. I used to drive him to work in the morning, in the opposite direction from where I work. I used to leave a little early in the afternoons to drive him to chemotherapy. Last year he lost his job. He is now on disability. Since we had no health insurance when he had the first cancer we were financially devastated by the medical bills. Even with health insurance later on (which is why he continued to work), we have still never completely recovered enough to save any money for our retirement. My mother is 96 years old and needs the special care you can only get in a nursing home. She worked as an independent accountant until she was 90 years old and contributed to Social Security and Medicare all that time. My earliest memories were of her working in her home office. Now the nursing home where she resides has to close due to lack of funds. When I visit her I see all the other elderly and disabled people there and wonder who on earth would want to see these people turned out onto the streets? Who on earth could be callous and mean-spirited enough to deny these people the care they need? Who on earth could possibly think that their families can afford to pay for their full-time care without government assistance? What is wrong with the GOP? When did they become such thick-skinned, pitiless people? Every other civilized nation has some form of single-payer system to care for its citizens. Why don't we? Medicare for All is the solution. Get rid of the for-profit health insurance companies. Health care is a human right; it is the civil rights issue of our time.
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June Myklebust
Colorado Springs, CO, Disabled college student
I am a 46 year old low income woman on disability that will be directly affected but a cut of programs like Medicare and Medicaid. I have degenerative disk disease and walk with a cane. I have also been diagnosed with Sjogren's Syndrome (auto immune disorder related to Lupus) and if Medicare/Medicaid is cut I will not be able to receive the treatments I need. My rent is 3/4 of my income and food stamps keep me being able to eat. I am on the Section 8 waiting list but that will not come in for over 2 years as my area is not getting their funds until next year and my number on the randomly pick waiting list is 1179 out of over 5000, and that is just for El Paso County, Colorado. I am also a college student at Colorado Technical University and without the Pell grants I would not be able to keep my education going. I am in Bachelors of Science for Advertising & Digital Media program. I am not an idiot. I hold a B average and I am 46 years old.
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Diane H. Fabian
Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, disabled/retraining
Without Social Security disability (SSDI/SSI), I would be dead. Because of this aid, I have been able to achieve the stability necessary to pursue job re-training, and I remain hopeful of being able to build a productive future. Medicaid covers the treatment/medications that are essential to remaining productive. The greatest threat facing me isn't crime or al Qaiddah, but my own government.Social Security does not add a single penny to the debt. It is fully funded, and running a surplus. It was morally reprehensible of our own government to pull public dollars out of welfare aid for impoverished women and children simply to maintain entirely unreasonable tax cuts for the rich, and for corporations that continue to use that money to export our jobs, deeply harming this country.I understand that the Republicans refuse to restore tax rates on the rich, even if it causes the nation to collapse. Stand strong. If you give in, they will simply demand more, and more, and more. We owe the rich absolutely nothing, and if they don't wish to pay US taxes, they have the means to move elsewhere.
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Carol Short
Mays Landing, New Jersey, unemployed due to social anxiety disorder
Without such things as Social Security or Food Stamps and such similar things to that people like me with the disability to be around strangers without having a panic attack to the point that you feel like your having a heart attack would not be able to live on anything. Also I personally saw a woman whom is going through a terrible situation where her husband is termilly ill and she does not have a job but yet she can not get assisstance from the local government something is wrong with that, they should of helped her having a little girl no older than maybe 3 or 4 in need of food, in need to wash their clothes, etc. Without these programs there would be even more people struggling through just to keep their house and feed their children.
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Val
Arlington, VA,
I am really worried about cuts to all the programs, but especially Social Security.When I was young, my mom went from working in the private sector to working from home as an independent contractor. Giving up the stability and benefits of a desk job wasn't easy, but it gave her the flexibility she needed to take care of me and keep our household running while still earning a living. When she was ready to return to the more traditional work force, the economic crisis hit. Since that time, she's had several jobs, but they have repeatedly gone under and made cuts, leaving my mom periodically without work – and, unfortunately, without much in terms of a retirement account. Though retirement for her is still a few years away, for my mom, Social Security will make up nearly all of her retirement income. Though she's been a (highly) contributing member of society, she just won't have a robust retirement account to turn to in order to make ends meet. If cuts are made to Social Security during the deficit reduction talks, my family's future will be jeopardized.
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