Congress

While we only know of one woman who made sure to cast her vote even though her water had broken and her contractions were five minutes apart, she was far from alone in her determination to make her voice heard at the polls yesterday in an election season where women’s health, reproductive rights, and fair pay were frequent flashpoints. Women made up the majority of the electorate on Tuesday—53 percent. Unmarried women were 23 percent of voters, up from 20 percent in 2008. And women’s votes were key to yesterday’s results.

Five new female Senators were elected, resulting in a record 20 women in the Senate. In New Hampshire as of January, for the first time ever in a state the governor, both senators, and all House members will be women.

Women made the difference in rejecting a proposed Minnesota constitutional amendment that would have defined marriage as only between a man and a woman. Read more »

Last night was a historic night for women in American political life. A record number of women ran for Congress in 2012. And while still far from equal, the numbers of women in the next Congress will be historically high.

With a few races too close to call, there will apparently be between 75 and 79 women in the House of Representatives, up from 73 currently serving. There will be 20 in the Senate, up from 17 currently serving. This means that women will comprise about 18 percent of the next Congress, up from under 17 percent in the current Congress.

Other historic achievements last night:

• Senator-elect Mazie Hirono (D-HI) became the first Asian-American woman to be elected to the Senate and Hawai’i’s first female Senator.
• Senator-elect Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) became the first openly gay person to be elected to the Senate and Wisconsin’s first female Senator.

We strongly disagree with former Senator Alan Simpson, who told Bloomberg News earlier this week, “Medicare is on automatic pilot. It will use up every resource in the government.”

Senator Simpson is known for his rhetorical flair and long-standing interest in our nation’s fiscal health. He recently co-chaired a national commission on fiscal responsibility and is well known for telling Americans that we need to make tough fiscal choices. Unfortunately, he characterizes Medicare as a budget conundrum, not the critically important health insurance program it really is. Medicare covers hospital care, doctors’ visits, diagnostic tests, rehabilitation, home health care, preventive care and more for more than 47 million older Americans and individuals with disabilities. For 47 years it has been a pillar of our nation’s health care system, and – because Medicare enrollees are older, sicker and need more health care services than the rest of the population – is an important source of revenue for health care providers. For example, Medicare payments represent 28 percent of national spending on hospital care and 45 percent of spending on home health services. Read more »

Stand Up for Tax Fairness

Call your Members of Congress at 1-888-744-9958 and tell them that it's time for the richest Americans to pay their fair share.

Call 1-888-744-9958 today!

It's go time!

In less than 24 hours Congress will start to vote on whether to end — or extend — the Bush-era tax cuts for the richest two percent.

Ending the Bush-era tax cuts on income above $250,000 per couple, as President Obama and Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) have proposed, would help restore fairness to the tax code and protect programs vital to women and their families. It would give 98 percent of Americans their full tax cuts next year.

And the wealthiest two percent would still receive tax breaks on their first $250,000! We simply can't afford to give even more tax breaks to those who need them least when so many women and families are struggling just to make ends meet.

Calling is easy. And only takes a couple of minutes. Dial 1-888-744-9958 and listen to easy instructions and a sample script. Read more »

Stand Up for Tax Fairness

Call your Members of Congress at 1-888-744-9958 and tell them that it's time for the richest Americans to pay their fair share.

Call 1-888-744-9958 today!

It's time for Congress to restore some fairness to the tax code. As early as next week, Congress will start to vote on whether to end — or extend — the Bush-era tax cuts for the richest two percent.

Extending the Bush-era tax cuts on income up to $250,000 per couple as President Obama has proposed would give 98 percent of Americans their full tax cuts next year. And the wealthiest two percent would still receive tax breaks on their first $250,000! We simply can't afford to give even more tax breaks to those who need them least when so many women and families are struggling just to make ends meet.

Call your Members of Congress at 1-888-744-9958 and tell them that it's time for the richest Americans to pay their fair share: we need to end the Bush tax cuts on income over $250,000. Read more »

When you hear the word lobbyist, what comes to mind? Special interests, back-door wheelings and dealings, and other generally shady shenanigans, right? Not always, as it turns out.

Last Tuesday, I had the opportunity to lobby my representatives in Congress as part of Intern Advocacy Day, a joint endeavor between Advocates for Youth, SIECUS, CHANGE, and Choice USA. Over forty interns from various health advocacy organizations around DC gathered near the Capitol to advocate on behalf of two very important pieces of legislation, the Real Education for Healthy Youth Act and the Global Democracy Promotion Act.

As an NWLC intern and as a person who cares about the rights of women more generally, I was eager to urge my congressional delegation to champion these bills. Although they differ wildly in scope, both pieces of legislation are premised on the idea that the best way to promote healthy, empowered decision-making is through the provision of uncensored, scientifically accurate information that is free of ideological biases and paternalistic assumptions.

The Real Education for Healthy Youth Act, for instance, sets forth a policy vision for federally funded comprehensive sex education programs. It outlines standards that sex education curricula must adhere to in order to receive federal funding, directs grant money to comprehensive sex education programs that prioritize information over ideology, and allows for education that is inclusive of lesbian, gay, and bisexual students. Read more »

Last week, the Senate voted to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act by a bipartisan vote, an important step forward for the many thousands of women who depend on its protections. But before we forget the Senate debate, we should note not only the surprising resistance the bill met there, but also the specific basis Mike Lee (R-Utah) offered for opposing it. Senator Lee, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee and whose views on the Constitution are thus particularly influential, implied that VAWA was unconstitutional.

Senator Lee objected to VAWA’s grants to state and local governments. VAWA provides funding for programs operated by courts, law enforcement, state agencies, local governments, and others, in order to address the needs of victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. In general, recipients must apply to receive these funds. Senator Lee asserted that somehow providing this funding to the state and local governments seeking it compromises states’ rights under the Constitution, because violent crime is regulated primarily by the states. “As a matter of constitutional policy,” Senator Lee stated, “Congress should not seek to impose rules and standards as conditions for federal funding in areas where the federal government lacks constitutional authority to regulate directly.” He also protested that “the strings that Congress attaches to federal funding in the VAWA reauthorization restrict each state’s ability to govern itself.”

Senator Lee’s theory of the Constitution seems to forbid Congress from imposing any sort of standards on the money it gives to state and local governments, even when state and local governments have specifically sought the money and voluntarily assumed the conditions that come with it. This is a radical theory that would make it impossible for Congress to fund the VAWA programs that have been so important for improving the criminal justice response to violent crime against women and for creating coordinated community responses to address the needs of those who experience domestic violence, dating violence, stalking, and sexual assault. Read more »

Do you think our nation’s leaders would allow a hospital to refuse to perform an emergency abortion on a woman – even if it means she would die? Unfortunately, if some leaders have their way, the answer would be yes. The House of Representatives actually passed a bill that would allow hospitals to turn away women needing emergency abortion care. This bill is just one example of the recent onslaught of attacks at both the federal and state level that that aim to deny women’s access to reproductive health care.

Getting the emergency care a woman needs should not depend on the hospital to which she is taken.

Watch our new video and tell your leaders: My Health is NOT Up for Debate™!

Read more »

It's Valentine's Day, and we have an idea about how our Senators could show all Americans how much they care about us!

Millions of hardworking Americans will be cut off of unemployment insurance (UI) unless Congress acts to fully renew the federal UI program that's set to expire at the end of this month. But House Republican leaders are at it again, trying to slash benefits, impose onerous new burdens on unemployed workers, and dismantle the UI system that is a lifeline for so many families.

We need your help! Call your Senators toll-free today at 1-888-245-3381 and ask them to have a heart this Valentine's Day: fully and cleanly renew unemployment insurance for the rest of the year with no cuts and no barriers to benefits! Read more »

I used to think that making a statement on the floor of Congress required showing some respect for the venue in which you are speaking, including refraining from making untrue statements. Yesterday, several members of Congress have proven to me, again, that for some of them this just isn’t the case anymore. When speaking on the House floor today, several members claimed that the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive coverage rule would require employers to cover pills that cause abortions. This is simply false. The rule requires coverage of all FDA-approved contraceptive methods. What is an FDA-approved contraceptive method? That’s easy enough to find right here on the FDA website. Pills, patch, IUDs, etc. The members of the House are probably conflating emergency contraception, which is an FDA-approved contraceptive method, with abortion. But as my colleague Jill Morrison pointed out last week, it’s not. Read more »