Romney's bad deal for women

Ladies, still conflicted? If you like Mitt Romney's economic plan but also like President Obama's position on women's health, check the fact-checkers.

Mitt Romney is offering you more than a sketchy deal; you are being presented with a bad one. The GOP wants women to trade 40 years of struggle of women to control their own health decisions in return for economic plans that are impossible.

Romney's “clear vision” for the economy is a mirage. Romney's newest proposal promises lowered taxes by 20 percent for all. There has not been a financial analyst, even the six partisan ones Romney cites, who says cutting the wealthy's loopholes will offset the loss in tax revenue of $5 trillion over 10 years.

Both Tampa Bay politifact.com and Annenberg Foundation Factcheck.org agreed with the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center's conclusion that what Romney proposes is “mathematically impossible.” The middle class will then be stuck with either $2,000 per-year per-family in higher taxes or elimination of deductions for mortgages, education, and charity, or the deficit will explode. (Factcheck.org called Romney's claim that Obama would raise middle class taxes by $4,000 “nonsense.”)

Romney proposes another $3 trillion to continue Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and pump up the Pentagon. Financier Steve Rattner (New York Times, 10/14) concluded that to pay for these, 40 percent would have to be cut from a list which includes education, child care, child health coverage, school lunches, Head Start, military pensions, and more.

Washingtonpost/blogs/fact-checker on Oct. 16 gave Romney's five-point plan to add 12 million jobs four “Pinocchios,” called it bait and switch, and said it did not add up. Moody's Analytics predicts 12 million jobs will be created by 2016, no matter who is president. Macroeconomic Advisors also predicted a gain of 12.3 million jobs. Obama will reach the 12 million goal just staying his course.

Romney moans that women have lost more than hundreds of thousands jobs under Obama, but women's unemployment rate was a full percentage below men. FactCheck.org concluded “Romney's figure was six times too high … with the large majority (of jobs) lost before Obama was sworn in.”

The GOP deal? They want to make it harder and more expensive for women to work. If there is one single factor that has enabled women to work, it is control over their reproduction schedule. Romney and the GOP want to repeal Obamacare. Doing so would reinstate high co-pays for mammograms and pap smears and would allow insurance companies to charge women more for health insurance than for men.

Romney supports allowing all employers to refuse insurance to cover birth control.

Mitt Romney is pledged to appointing members to the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, making abortion illegal. Romney is committed to defunding Planned Parenthood, the low income service that provides women health services from birth control to cancer screenings. (Federal money is already forbidden by law to fund abortions). Romney endorsed a Mississippi personhood initiative giving fertilized eggs full legal protection, which would have effectively banned some forms of birth control and all abortions.

Women's pay is around 80 cents on the dollar to a man's pay for the same job. The Republicans opposed the Lilly Ledbetter act signed by President Obama to help women sue for such discrimination. In Debate No. 2, Romney avoided supporting it with his infamous “binder full of women” attempt to connect with women, leaving the impression he had never met competent women in his prior career.

I have no desire to see my two daughters and two granddaughters return to the 1950s, but that is what women are being asked to trade off. It is a deal women should refuse.


Also published in the Sky Hi Daily News today

War on women? Most miss the point. It is about the ability to choose

Hilary Rosen created a tsunami of a political brouhaha when she criticized Ann Romney for being the advocate that women cared about jobs more than other issues (referring to her husband’s hard line position supporting the Blunt amendment that would give employers the option of  not covering contraceptives with health insurance, and embracing the right wing stance on many of the social conservative issues).  Most pundits have missed the point: It is about the ability to choose.

Romney himself was on record for saying women do not care about the social issues and care about jobs. Perhaps he had better look at his poll numbers as many  women switched sides to the Democratic column.  

What Hilary Rosen, a former aide to Hillary Clinton  and not a member of the Obama administration or a paid consultant to the Democratic National Committee, did was to infer condemnation of  Ann Romney for never having to work a day in her life, had the choice to stay home, and raise her large family, and therefore did not understand the problems other less privileged women had.   

One  point they all missed is  that there is a connection between women’s choice to  control their reproductive lives and an ability to be able to work . Family planning is critical to the ability of women to go to work in these days of expensive child care .   There was a time when your job position was not held open if a person took leave to care for a newborn.  In most European countries, women get compensation for staying home that first year, but not in ours.  Nursing a baby  was not an option on the job. Those possibilities have been mitigated, but are still dependent upon employer policies and  a patchwork of laws allowing family leave and the ability to come back to work after a brief time at home recovering from child birth.

Wage discrimination meant that those who did go to work earn 70% on every dollar as compared to men and Romney’s campaign was totally ignorant of the fact that Pres. Obama had signed into law rather recently the Lilly Ledbetter act, which made discrimination against women…equal pay for equal work…a law.  This obviously was not in Romney’s  staff’s radar or interest area.

Another point not expressed is that there are many women who would like to stay home, raise their kids, and be a homemaker but they are either single or their husbands cannot bring home enough bacon to cover the costs of raising their family. 

There was a time in my career where I was fired for being pregnant.  It was in the early 1960’s.  I had set out to be a “career woman”,  working in public relations  in media and Wall Street, but I found that at that point, it was no option. I had no choice.  When I graduated from college in 1960, I was the oddball, a woman who wanted to work for the joy of feeling that I was a whole human being, educated and able. In those days of  lower living costs,  and married to a physician, I became a professional volunteer. Even then,  we could afford “help”.   I did not work full time until all three children were in school.

I had watched my mother married to my telephone company executive father who was a stay at home mom, who also had “help”.  My brother was handicapped and even if she had wanted to work, she could not, in any case.  It was not until his medical bills (pre Medicaid) overwhelmed salary and savings that she went to work, and she was in her ‘50’s .   She had no choice.

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On the other hand, I do have cousins in the military who raised their family on military officer’s pay and she homeschooled her brood of six children,  a choice for which I have nothing but respect.  I would not have had the patience, and I fault myself for that.

Where all are missing the point is that women should have the choice and be respected for it if they want to work or must work or if they want to stay home. Reality is that it also means women must be able to control their reproductive lives and when they enter the workforce, get paid fairly.  From that standpoint, Obama gets it. Romney does not.