Friday, March 4, 2011

Women Concerns: Impact of Cutting Government Spending on the Health of Women and Children?

Keywords or Terms: Women and Children’s Programs; Political Privilege; Strategic Decisions; Corporate Greed; US Budgets; Social Security; Medicare

How destructive is the new maître of downsizing government and cutting government spending to the health of women and children? Very.

The current Republican led House of Representatives is re-defining women’s relationship to the state. The new choice of legislation in the U.S. House of Representative, is hardly job creation for the teaming millions of Americans out of a job; but : 1) denying funding for planned parenthood, the nation’s largest provider of health and reproductive services to women; 2) cutting nearly $800 million from the women, Infant, and Children (WIC) program, which provides life-saving nutrition program for low-income families; and 3) slashing nearly one billion dollars from Head Start program that effectually eliminates pre-school program for more than 200,000 low income children and about 50,000 women teachers and instructors that service the program, among others (Office of Senator Murray, D-Washington). Tasha, times a--changing!

At a time when the recession is biting harder than you can imagine, Republicans are all out to gauge some of the remaining safety net program for the most disadvantaged groups in our society, women and children. Women, who are trying their best to hold it together in the face of the worst recession this nation has ever known, are being relegated to the medieval time experiences. They are being told they cannot have milk on the table for their children because their husbands cannot find a job in an economy providing 190,000 jobs a month for an anxious population of close to 16 million unemployed Americans.

Though few women in privileged political positions are wielding political influence on personal relationship, more than 200,000 low-income women without a place to turn to for nutritional supplement during the early years of their children’s lives, are being told, tough luck, you cannot have $800 million dollars for your women, infant and children program. This is in a nation spending 10 Billion dollars on a war started on lies. I’m I missing something? Mama, you said the Republicans and Tea Party members wouldn’t do us wrong, but they are! Republican Lawmakers are doing women wrong by taking away milk from the mouth of children. The lawmakers who engineered effort to slash the head start program are doing the whole America wrong. Those lawmakers who believe that cutting funding for planned parenthood is the ideal thing to do, need to direct their political power towards creating jobs; maybe that would ensure that fewer women would seek help from planned parenthood.

Too many important and strategic decisions regarding the economy that need to be taken due to the anecdotal evidence of the current recession are being set aside and Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are jumping on the bandwagon of destroy the middle class and send children of the poor to their early graves! The economic predictor tools to correct for the cyclical slump in a market economy that needs to be discussed and addressed to ensure that the boom and bust cycle of our economy are ameliorated, are hardly being contemplated by the current House of Representatives. The mammoth data on economic indicator performance harvested and managed by several federal government agencies are hardly being looked over and a permanent solution prescribed to correct for many of those challenges of repeated recessions that we are probably about familiar with now. Are lawmakers or their economic advisers saying we cannot do anything about the cyclical recession in the nation’s economy? Is this very true or are people just ignoring the obvious?

Women and their children are tired of being used as football, whenever there is a down turn in the economy. The issue of women health and that of their children can no longer wait as the government caters for those huge Wall Street Banks, considered too big to fail. If Republicans cannot fathom the obvious information available in the government office of management and budget on how to trim federal budgets without harming the less privileged among us, maybe it is time to ask: on what side are Republicans on? Interested lawmakers can avail themselves of the real truth: the benefit programs, Social Security and Medicare, constitute a huge chunk of US budget and until something is done to either of them, it may just be difficult to talk about managing the government deficits.

As previous United States Congresses have found, streamlining government budgets, especially the line items of Social Security and Medicare, is the greatest secret to managing the deficit in Federal Budget. Just as discretionary and supplementary budgets add to the deficits, so do poor revenue collection, including reduced taxation, add to the challenges of the nation’s deficit. The process of stream lining both line items, Social Security and Medicare would be painful; however, the lawmakers from both aisle of Congress must just agree to address the issues surrounding these two programs, if they truly want to make a difference. Haphazardly cutting money from beneficial programs, whose returns on investments quadruples over r the years and life time of citizens, especially the Woman, Infant and Children program is not the right way to go.

Social welfare programs that are often criticized and sometimes bastardized by some who do not understand the extent of the implications of doing away with such programs on the quality of life of citizens, including women and children health, are probably the crème of the crop of investments from government budgets; these are investments that you can visibly count their impact and results. It is unfortunate that the interconnectedness of reduced funding for programs as Planned Parenthood, head start and WIC programs to the quality of life of many Americans are often ignored or denied, even by well-meaning and educated lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Example of the quality of life of an Americans in 1940 as compared to what we have today is a simple demonstration of how important these social programs have been to the overall life-span of an average American.

Planned Parenthood, Head Start and Women, Infant and Children programs are not charities as many Republicans and Tea Party members may want us to believe, they are the fundamental means of uplifting many Americans from poverty. The evidence of this assertion is found in public records and governmental registries that could be called for by any lawmaker. Adopting the rule of one jacket fits all and claiming that all people must partake in the pains of an under-performing economy, is failing to realize the human angle and dynamics of the current recession. Once the bread winner in a home loses a job in a recession, the first boot to fall is health care, next is the roof, then nutrition for the children. Are we not tired of being one of the most industrialized society in the world with the largest group of its citizens on the streets?

The initial difficulty of finding out where to get help for a new unemployed or one that has run out of his or her unemployment benefits, is not as easy as many people think; and, even when help is offered, it is usually at a level far lower than the standard of living the newly unemployed person, or out of unemployment insurance benefits person, is used to. Take this from someone who once worked as a Financial Services Specialist for Washington State Department of Health and Human Services. Working for Washington State Department of Health and Human Services opened my eyes to many things that I would have easily denied without the experience. Some families’ experience would draw you to tears and somehow, make you more humane. After reading a case file and interviewing a newly unemployed woman on a bright sunny day, I once went to the bathroom to cry. If in doubt, lawmakers wanting to cut the Women, Infant, and Children (WIC) program should volunteer one week at their State’s Department of Health and Human Services and call me once done.

Women and children’s health cannot take a back seat to corporate welfare. Single women heads of households have no confraternities of a golf club to turn to, when out of a job. Republicans, especially the Tea Party members who want to effect their newly found political power, must not sanction women and children’s health and welfare for the failures of the market forces due prominently from greed of corporate America. America’s economy may be in the gutters, but what is missing is the will of many men to act to manage the delicate balance between production and waste. Republican lawmakers must now work hard to turn America around by helping create jobs through legislation that will allow Americans work the delicate balance of savings and credit, want and need, and managing home-front crisis and the public persona of the average American.


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