Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to highlight how the President's fiscal year 2007 budget will harm millions of women and children around the country. Tonight you are going to hear from some of my colleagues about those specific programs that…
Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to highlight how the President's fiscal year 2007 budget will harm millions of women and children around the country. Tonight you are going to hear from some of my colleagues about those specific programs that have proven to be successful for all women but are currently being cut and in some cases eliminated altogether.
The President is proposing to cut programs that disproportionately help women, children, the elderly, and the increasing population of Americans living in poverty.
Earlier this month, I was part of a recent delegation of Members of Congress who traveled to the gulf coast and New Orleans where most communities are still struggling to clean up their homes and get back to some sense of normalcy after Hurricane Katrina. We need to be doing more to help those, those that lost everything to regain their lives. These communities must have quality health care, emergency care, and safe environmental conditions. But we cannot accomplish these goals and help the millions of women and children around the country who are living in poverty with the reckless and immoral budget that President Bush has proposed.
Key domestic programs that provide food and housing and support to women are vulnerable under this administration. In fact, the Bush administration is determined to protect tax cuts for the very wealthiest of Americans and provide health care for those who already have health care coverage and not include the 50 million uninsured people in our country today. The President wants to eliminate educational support for women, food assistance for seniors living in poverty, and he wants to significantly slash funding from important safety net programs like Medicaid and food stamps. In just 4 years, the cost of making these tax cuts permanent will exceed the amount that the Federal Government spends on education beginning in preschool through college.
Where is the economic recovery that the administration promised? Real wages as we know are down. The number of people living in poverty has increased. Job growth has been stagnant. And tonight I am glad that so many of our colleagues in our Congress, the Women's Democratic Congress, who serve here are coming together to speak out against the President's budget and how it is going in the wrong direction for women and their families.
I would like to begin by talking about education. But first I would like to begin by addressing the President's failure to address rising college costs. With increased funding for student financial aid programs like the PELL Grant program and the Perkins loan program. Before my election to public office, I worked for the California Student Opportunity and Access Program and helped many young people in my community obtain the ideal of going to college and receiving financial aid because there was no other means to go to college.
The President's budget currently continues to shortchange America's students who rely on financial aid to pursue their college education. Just one month after Congressional Republicans cut college aid by $12 billion, $12 billion, the President proposed a budget that eliminates, decreases and freezes funding for much needed programs that are vital to helping students of color, people from my own community.
Low interest Perkins loans are crucial resources as we know for college students who have demonstrated need. Two-thirds of the Perkins loan recipients are from families with annual incomes less than $40,000 a year. Yet, the Perkins loan program took a hit in the President's 2007 budget and would recall $664 million from the federal Perkins loan fund for nearly 1,800 colleges in the year 2007. And as a result 463,000 college students would lose a key part of their financial aid.
Despite the record tuition increases that we all know are going through in our States, Bush's budget breaks his promise yet again of making college more affordable and he actually freezes the maximum PELL grant in scholarships. Six years ago President Bush promised to increase the maximum PELL scholarship for all college freshmen at $5,100.
This budget is now the fourth time that the President has frozen the Pell Grant. Access to financial aid, as we know, is a huge factor for many students, particularly from low-income areas like my own.
Three out of four young Latino adults who do not attend college cite the fact that without having financial aid they cannot continue to have the American dream. About 40 percent of African American students and 30 percent of Hispanic students depend on Pell Grants, compared to 23 percent of all students.
Young women, just trying to improve their earning potential and get a better job also disproportionately rely on the Pell Grant program, and I have to tell you, when I was a student, that was my means of going on to college.
My parents could not afford to send me to college. They could not afford to give me a substantial amount of money to go to a university. So thank God that we had Federal financial aid programs available, work study programs and the National Student Loan Program, where I was able to attend a 4-year institution to have my full tuition paid for, including expenses; and I thank God that our government at that time stepped up to the plate.
I cannot say that now, under this administration, but for the last 4 years now we have seen an increase of 57 percent in costs to attend college, by this President. We need to reject the President's freezes and cuts to financial aid and help those students who want to go to college, but the high cost of tuition is just way out of line.
When these students get to college, we need to do more to encourage them to pursue fields that will encourage innovation and increase America's competitiveness and increase the number of women that seek access into the technical fields like science and math. While women account for more than half of the number of bachelor's and master's degrees awarded, they make up a small number in the fields that are crucial to spurring innovation and job creation, for example, in areas like engineering, computer science, physical sciences and math. Only 21 percent of master's degrees in engineering were awarded to women. For computer science and physical science, women only earn about 35 percent of the master's degrees in the country.
The statistics are far worse for women of color, like Latinas and African American women and even Asian
Americans. Within the small number of women who earn an engineering master's degree, 11 percent are Asian American, a little over 4 percent are African American and less than 4 percent are Latinas.
We need to encourage women to be part of the technical and skilled workforce from school age all the way up to adulthood.
The President's budget also eliminates the Dropout Prevention Program and, therefore, ignores the big problem that we have currently in many of our communities where we see a number of our students dropping out of high school. For the past 4 years, the Bush administration has cut funding for dropout prevention, denying our most-needed students the opportunity to succeed, and in Los Angeles, by the way, only 29 percent of Latinos and 47 percent of African Americans actually graduate from high school.
This budget also freezes over $1 billion in current funding for ongoing programs, including the GEAR UP program, the TRIO and Upward Bound program, which are vital programs to many youngsters in our community. Many that attend and currently are enrolled in those programs are the first in their family to have the opportunity to be trained and have the motivation and support and mentoring that is needed to be successful in college. With the President saying that he wants to zero out these programs, he is sending the wrong message to my community and to communities across this country.
We need to be encouraging all of our young people to pursue higher education to keep America competitive and to increase our productivity and economy. With deep cuts to student aid proposed by the President, we are closing the doors to eager students instead of providing a helping hand to those who want to learn, who want to work and want to be a part of the society.
We must defeat this immoral budget to help our students achieve their goals and access all the opportunities that our Nation can provide.
I would like to briefly speak about women in the workforce. Once these young women who complete college graduate, they face challenges in the workforce. The wage gap among women and men continues to this day. Some of you may know that women earn on an average 76 cents to every dollar that a man earns. Instead of eliminating the wage gap and providing more opportunities for women to enter the workforce and earn good wages, the Bush budget continues to undercut and devalue women's contributions to the American labor force.
The Bush budget eliminates the women in apprenticeships and nontraditional occupational programs. This program, which only costs $1 million per year, provides grants to employers to help them recruit, train and retain women in nontraditional and well-paying jobs. Women who were a part of Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations projects were 47 percent more likely to enter higher-paying technical jobs than others.
The overwhelming lack of women in technical fields like science and math, as you know, is astounding. Even if women graduate with engineering and science and math degrees, they are still faced with low salaries.
On the average, women hold Ph.D.s in computer science and engineering, but still earn $9,000 less per year than their male counterparts. Latino engineers, both men and women, earn $10,000 less than the average salary for all engineers, and African American engineers earn $8,000 less.
We need to encourage women to be a part of the technical and skilled workforce from school age right up to adulthood.
Programs like Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations Act are a part of that effort, and I will work in Congress, along with my colleagues, to reject the elimination of this or any other programs that help women achieve their dreams and realize their potential to be an important component of the technical workforce.
From the wage gap to discrimination, we need to do more to help women succeed and support this vital and necessary part of the American workforce. I urge all of my colleagues here today and tonight to do everything possible to defeat the President's immoral and irresponsible budget that puts women and children's futures at risk.
I would now like to introduce one of my colleagues who has joined me tonight, who is also part of the Women's Issues Group here in the Congress, the distinguished former ambassador and Congresswoman, Diane Watson, who is going to also join me in discussion regarding this important topic with respect to the budget cuts towards women and their families.
Thank you, Honorable Congresswoman Diane Watson for your eloquent words. I know that there are thousands, millions of people out watching us tonight, and I know in my great State of California there is a lot of preoccupation in terms of what is occurring here in the House. It is very disappointing to go back home and tell folks that the policies this administration has leveled are outrageous and severely harmful to our most vulnerable populations, our children, our seniors, our working families.
And we don't have to look too far to be reminded what the President attempted to do just last year when he talked about privatizing Social Security. A failed policy. He tried to sell it. I think he had several town hall meetings. I know I did. And when we went out and spoke to our seniors in an open, unbiased setting, where no one was given pretickets and everyone was allowed to come in, where we had lay people, we had doctors, and we had folks in the health care industry but we had also the seniors there, they asked the very important questions: How is making this program, Social Security, which is the bedrock, our insurance plan for all Americans when they retire, how is it going to help to privatize it? Who is going to make the money off of that? And if I don't pay into it and put money aside, who is going to support me in my old age?
I heard this from widows and disabled people, and I heard an outpouring of negative support for the privatization of Social Security. In just about every forum that I held in my district, in east Los Angeles, in the San Gabriel Valley, we heard by an overwhelming margin that the people did not support that plan. Do not touch Social Security was the clear message that I got. And I know that many colleagues in the House on our side, in the Democratic Caucus, held several, if not thousands, close to a thousand, I believe, town hall meetings last year, and overwhelmingly there is a consensus that we can't afford to shortchange our seniors and people who have paid into the system. And to also neglect the disabled, because there are some very vulnerable populations that rely on that Social Security check.
Many people wrote me personally and said, Congresswoman Solis, please do not allow for further cuts in Social Security. We need to have an indexing system so that we can keep up with the cost of living. My rent is $400, but my check for that month is maybe $800. I have to pay for utilities. I have to pay for medicine, and it isn't enough to cover my medicine. So I have to cut my medicine in half and spread it out for the week or the month.
And still no one there to listen, to help. This administration has turned their backs on our most vulnerable population. Thank goodness that that proposal went nowhere. But I understand that there are current attempts to try to revive it again, and I know that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have also heard very strongly that their constituents are not in agreement with privatizing Social Security.
That leads me to something else, because one of the things I think is most important for us tonight is to talk about Medicaid and its effect on women and the proposed cuts that this President would like to make. We can't allow it.
Here on this chart I would like to explain to the public and to my colleagues that this is the Republican budget, which fails to provide health care for women and families. And if you note, women account for over 56 percent of Medicare beneficiaries. The Republican budget slashes Medicare by $36 billion over 5 years. The majority of Medicaid beneficiaries are women and girls. The Republican budget cuts Medicaid by $42 billion over 5 years, and more than 20 million women do not have any form of health insurance.
The Republicans health savings account, which is much like the privatization of Social Security, would lead to higher out-of-pocket costs for most Americans. And once people hear about this, they will turn down the notion of health savings accounts.
In my district, you have to have money to be able to put away just to set up that account. We are talking about needy people, working class people, working families that are struggling. They can't afford to put $200 and $300 away per month just to provide for a premium to pay for that health care account. And then we are probably sure to hear that some of these providers that are going to get into these accounts are going to be very selective and cherry pick who their patients will be. They are not going to take the very ill, the very sick.
That is why it is important that the government step in and continue to fully fund Medicaid and not go in the wrong direction that this administration would like to go into.
I would like to go back to my comments here where the President's budget proposes new rounds of Medicaid cuts that would take another $14 billion out of Medicaid, as I said over the next 5 years. These cuts come just months after Republicans in Congress forced through an ill- conceived budget reconciliation bill which slashed $6.9 billion over the next 5 years in the Medicaid program.
Over 20 million women in our country lack any form of health care. Again, cuts to Medicaid, an already underfunded program, would have a devastating impact on women and their families. And more than 53 million people, including 14 percent of low-income Americans, currently have no access to health care. And it is even more important because more than one in every
four children in the United States is covered by Medicaid. That is more than 25 million children in our country. More than 30 percent of children with disabilities rely on Medicaid for health coverage and services.
Medicaid provides essential care, such as family planning, breast and cervical cancer treatment, and care for disabled women to more than 16 million women, including approximately 10 million women of childbearing age. Nearly one in ten women in the U.S. receives health care coverage through Medicaid, and one-third of all poor women are covered by Medicaid, including 40 percent of single moms.
Medicaid is so important to Latinas, who have the highest rate of uninsurance, 37 percent, of any racial and ethnic minority group. Approximately 12 percent of low-income Latinas rely on Medicaid for their health care coverage. Even Latinas who are legal immigrants, who are here legally, find barriers to health care access.
Since 1996, legal immigrants have been barred from receiving Medicaid coverage for the first 5 years of their residency unless the State they reside in specifically covers them through State funds. In our State of California, we have been able to do that. This is a 5-year period in which these women and men who legally emigrated to the United States are denied regular health care and screenings for diseases that plague communities of color, like cancer, diabetes, HIV and AIDS.
Without health insurance, many Latinas are forced to delay or forego their health care coverage all together. For example, approximately 25 percent of Latinas have not even visited a physician in the last year. Incredible. Almost one-third of Latinas do not have any health care provider at all. And Latinas do not access prenatal care or cervical and breast cancer screenings at the same rate as the regular population.
We need to do more to expand access to Medicaid for all women, all women of color. Women are twice as likely as men to qualify for Medicaid because they are poorer, in lower-paying jobs, and are less likely to be offered health care insurance. Women of reproductive age are especially vulnerable because they are more likely to lack health insurance.
Medicaid accounts for two-thirds, two-thirds of all Federal and State family planning funding nationwide. This is the largest source of public funding for family planning services and products. Low-income pregnant women can receive critical prenatal care when they need it without being turned away. Medicaid ensures that women receive a full spectrum of maternity coverage, including prenatal, labor, delivery and postpartum care.
Medicaid is also important for elderly women, as we spoke about earlier. It is the largest source of funding for women over the age of 80 living in nursing homes. The program covers high-cost nursing homes and long-term care services.
Medicaid also covers important health screenings for cervical and breast cancer as well as for sexually transmitted infections. Medicaid in California provides vital health services to low-income women of all ages who comprise 75 percent of the beneficiaries ages 19 and older.
In California, in our great State, 42 percent of all births in the State are paid for by Medicaid. There is no question or doubt in my mind that Medicaid is a significant health safety net program for women. The cuts in Medicaid that are being proposed would shut the neediest individuals out of the public health system and put the health care of millions of women and young women and girls at risk.
Proposing reductions without ensuring the preservation of coverage for those in need simply transfers the burden to States that are already over stretched, and Medicaid cuts would shift costs to the States and impose higher costs to beneficiaries and health care providers who are already strapped. States would be forced to reduce Medicaid coverage and benefits, increasing the number of low-income Americans who are uninsured or underinsured.
The proposed Bush budget that we are discussing tonight would cut billions from Medicaid while doing nothing to make health care more affordable. Democrats believe in strengthening and not undermining Medicaid. The Federal Government should fulfill its promise of being a reliable partner in Medicaid, and we must protect Medicaid and maintain the current Federal commitment to this fundamental public health insurance program.
I stand in strong opposition to the President's budget because I know it does not go far enough in protecting the health and wellbeing of our families and our children.
In his State of the Union address, the President touted the government's responsibility to provide health care for the poor and the elderly and he set forth a goal of confronting the rising costs for all Americans. Unfortunately, the President's budget fails to live up to that goal. Instead, his budget undercuts health care for women, children and the elderly. America cannot afford to go in that direction. In recent years, health care costs have risen by almost 60 percent, and the number of uninsured continues to grow and grow, including more than 13.7 million Latinos. Today, 22 million women, one in 5 adult women, rely on Medicare for basic health insurance protection. In fact, women comprise 56 percent of the Medicare population. By the time women are age 85 and older, they account for nearly three-quarters of all beneficiaries, and President Bush's fiscal year 2007 budget that is being debated tonight in the Committee on Rules goes way off the mark by cutting back good proposals that help many, many of our Americans in the Medicare and Medicaid programs by increasing the fees paid by our veterans, and by increasing Medicare premiums paid by our poor seniors. That includes $39.4 billion in cuts to Medicare over 5 years and $105 billion in cuts over 10 years.
With the shoddy implementation of the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit program and the growing population of seniors who are living longer than ever, now is definitely not the time to cut back on Medicare. And women who are eligible for Medicare are going to be at greater risk if these cuts are implemented.
I have to tell you in my own district we had a series of these forums where we also talked with our seniors at various senior citizen sites about this very complicated program. Many said they refused to sign up. They refused to sign up because they could not go through the quagmire of 40 different programs that they were being told to select from. Many did not have access to appropriate linguistic information in Spanish and in Chinese. Some were not able to access a computer because there may be only one computer in their entire neighborhood. Our seniors cannot even afford a computer in their home, and are even less likely to be able to pay for an increased premium in the Medicare prescription drug program. It is a failure in my opinion.
Just this last week on Monday we had a forum, a press forum in front of a pharmacy in east Los Angeles, Mr. Ramirez's pharmacy, and we heard from some of our pharmacists as well as some of our seniors that those individuals who are dual eligible on Medicare and Medicaid had a very difficult time now going into the pharmacy to get their medicine. They did not know that all of a sudden Medicaid was just going to pay for the hospital service that they did not need at that time, but if they went in to get their medicine, they were going to be charged anywhere from $1 to $5 more for every prescription that needed to be filled. So if you needed to repeatedly get medicine to treat your diabetes, to treat your high blood pressure or heart disease, you would be paying anywhere from $100 to $200 more out of pocket. And these are the folks on a fixed income, so $5 and $10 is a hardship. It means no food, no electricity, no phone and could lead to death if they are not given the appropriate treatment. This continues to go on.
As Democrats, we are fighting to try to extend the deadline so people can go beyond the May 15 deadline that this administration said they would like to impose. If seniors do not sign up for this program by that time, they will be penalized, just further demonstrating how insensitive this administration is.
We have a bill as Democrats to extend that deadline to December 31, 2006. Why can't we get bipartisan support when the outcry has been so
strong. I ask my colleagues to consider how we as Members of Congress can take care of ourselves, have the best health care programs for ourselves and our families and yet forget about our constituents in our districts. That is shameful and we need to address that immediately.
I know in our communities, especially senior women of color, they are more likely to be low income. That is the case in east Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley. Fifty-six percent of African American women and 58 percent of Latinas live on Medicare and their annual incomes are less than $10,000 a year compared to 24 percent for white women beneficiaries. Who in their right mind could survive on $10,000 a year, maybe a widow who has outlived her spouse who maybe live in an apartment, does not even own a car and has very little wealth, and yet we are expecting them to pick themselves up by their bootstraps after they have given so much to our country and paid in to the tax base and the economy of this great country. Shame on the Bush administration for doing that, for cutting health care funding for the elderly when we cannot even agree to negotiate with, for example, the pharmaceutical companies to lower the cost of prescription drugs. We do it for our veterans, why can't we do it for all seniors. Why can't we allow for low cost and generic drugs to come into our country and import from those countries that we work with already. It is beyond comprehension for me to understand why this administration continues to have this roadblock where they do not want to support and preserve the rights of our seniors and our elderly.
The President seeks Medicare savings through arbitrary reductions in provider payments, and we heard this at my press conference on Monday from our local pharmacy who said, ``Congresswoman, I cannot even afford to give some of these medicines out because I am not getting an appropriate refund or rebate on the medicine that I am giving. It is costing me more to give out the medicine than what I am getting in in payments from the Federal Government.''
There is something wrong with that scheme, and I know perhaps the President has not thoroughly spent enough time in communities like mine to understand the hardships that are going on throughout our country right now. Those are challenges that we have to face. We have to face those here in Congress and we must do everything we can to see that this administration minimizes any costs and hardships to our seniors.
Medicare costs in my opinion definitely need to go back. We do not need to move forward with this prescription drug program that was implemented, that was given to us in the dawn of night, 2,000 pages that Members could not even read, and three or four more hours where the clock was running and people could not decide on how to vote. It just blew my mind to see that there was such a callous understanding of what the implications of this bill would be.
Now we know the truth. The seniors know the truth, and they know that these programs are not working for them. That in fact this program, this facade of a program that was supposed to help seniors, actually helped the pharmaceutical companies. They are the ones that made millions. They are the ones that stand to make millions from the implementation of this program. That is wrong. That is not why we were sent here to this House. We were sent here to work on behalf of our constituents, and I refuse to vote for programs that will keep harming not only our seniors, our children, our women and also our veterans, which is happening here tonight in back of me in the Committee on Rules.
We must talk freely about what is happening here and ask for transparency on the part of our elected leaders, especially those that control the domain of this House. We need to stand up. I know my colleagues in the Women's Caucus, in the Women's Democratic Caucus, will do everything we can to go out in the next few months, to hold forums and to continue to educate the public about the atrocities that are occurring. They need to be aware that we are here to speak to them clearly as Democrats, that we will stand for them and that we will fight with every fierce bone in our bodies to make sure that these cuts against our families and our children no longer occur. I pray for that moment to come soon.
I thank my colleague, Ms. Watson, for joining me tonight, and I thank the Honorable Nancy Pelosi and our leadership and all of the 46 members of our caucus, the Democratic Women's Caucus, who stand tall every single day, coming here to work and working in their districts to make sure that the public is aware of the transparency that our party would want it to be like here for all of us.
I want to thank also my staff and the staff of Leader Pelosi for helping us prepare for this one of many occasions we will come on the floor and speak the truth about these cuts that are being alleged and the harmful effects they will have to our communities, the senior community, the women's community, children's community and veterans' community.
I would ask individuals to please take note that this is the Democratic Women's Working Group fighting for America's women and our families. Visit our Website at http://democraticleader.house.gov/dwwg/ or e-mail us at democratic womensworking [email protected].