The Senate voted to pass a tacked on financial bailout proposal yesterday after a similar bailout failed in the House. With a clear majority of 74-25, the vote was quick, and citizen Republicans and Democrats I know sounded eerily similar in their criticism and concerns about the passage of the bill.
On Wednesday, before the vote, Linda Basch, PhD, President of the National Council for Research on Women, a network of 117 research, advocacy, and policy centers, expressed this concern and criticism well.
"There is growing concern among some about whether the Bailout Plan was hammered out too quickly without sufficient guarantees to taxpayers and accountability," Basch said, "We hope that Congress will go back to the drawing board and come up with a viable plan in a way that will boost the economy and restore market confidence."
Although this echoed the position of many voters, the Senate passed the bailout measure.
What changes did the Senate version include, what tax breaks and ear marks did it add, and were women and families adequately protected?
The Senate version was modified from the original House version, including some additions, most of which probably mean an increase in the bailout amount (more than the proposed $700 billion) due to:
- $8 billion in tax breaks for victims of recent natural disasters in the Midwest, Texas and Louisiana
- tax breaks for the middle class and businesses
- increases in the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s coverage cap for deposits to $250,000 from $100,000
- $17 billion in energy incentives
- and other tax breaks and earmarks (some very interesting if you'd like to have a look)
Basch said, "The bailout package must take into account the real needs and concerns of women in the U.S. Today, in the U.S., 14 million women live in poverty -- one in 8 women. We are facing a period of increasing recession and stagnation, which is not good for women."
Avis Jones-DeWeever, Ph.D., director of the National Council of
Negro Women’s Research, Public Policy, and Information Center, said the bailout bill should have included a broad-based loan modification
and refinance program that will allow millions of families to stay in their
homes. "This isn't rocket science. By
reversing the downward foreclosure spiral we've seen in recent years, home
values will go up and the market will begin to turn around. Moving forward
with any bill that merely addresses our short term crisis without adequately
addressing our long-term needs, is ultimately doomed to failure. If not in
Congress, then in our broader economy in the days ahead," she said.
With foreclosure an ongoing and increasing problem, women are the group at highest risk for becoming homeless and even jobless---and there's no parachute, golden or otherwise, that will completely help all of these women and their families.
Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) wrote in her book Rumors of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated that women managers earned 79.7 cents to a man's dollar in 2000, and that women in management positions dropped 13% between 1990 and 2000 (p.5). She also criticizes lack of quality and affordable childcare, penalties to working women, and lack of family-friendly policies in the workplace. These things affect women's ability to get ahead financially, and leave them at greater risk economically.
Basch concurred with this point, and said, "Women have fewer resources to help them weather the storm because of their already low wages, lower personal savings, and lower participation in employer-sponsored pension plans. Inflation, higher fuel and food prices, the sagging housing market, and rising unemployment all affect women in special ways."
According to Basch, the economic downturn will hit hardest the poor and single women-headed households who make up 28.7% of families living in poverty compared with 13.0 for households headed by single men.
"Women are more likely to hold sub-prime mortgages and many may lose their homes. This occurs at all income levels, even though women have slightly higher credit scores than men. For example, in the city of Baltimore, single, mostly African-American women accounted for 40% of home sales in 2006, but nearly half of these mortgages were sub-prime," Basch said.
She added, "Women are disproportionately affected by economic recession and instability. They have higher poverty rates, higher unemployment rates and smaller pensions and retirement funds. They make up 68% of minimum wage workers and their jobless rate jumped by a full point before the current financial collapse, so what impact will this have on women’s jobs? Women of color suffer disproportionately during economic downturns. The unemployment rate in March 2008 was nearly equal for men and women ages 20 and over. However, the rates for African-American women exceeded the rates for white women by nearly 40%."
Basch asked how the bailout will help women, and stated that she did not believe the current plan takes into account the need for a revitalized public sector and the need for an economy that works for everyone.
Basch, Jones-DeWeever, and the voters I know have valid concerns and strong criticisms.
U.S. Senator Russ Feingold, who voted nay on the measure in the Senate, said he opposed the Wall Street bailout plan because
. . .though well intentioned, and certainly much improved over the administration's original proposal, it remains deeply flawed. It fails to offset the cost of the plan, leaving taxpayers to bear the burden of serious lapses of judgment by private financial institutions, their regulators, and the enablers in Washington who paved the way for this catastrophe by removing the safeguards that had protected consumers and the economy since the great depression. The bailout legislation also fails to reform the flawed regulatory structure that permitted this crisis to arise in the first place. And it doesn't do enough to address the root cause of the credit market collapse, namely the housing crisis. Taxpayers deserve a plan that puts their concerns ahead of those who got us into this mess.
Senatorial candidate Rick Noriega agreed and said, "While we urgently need a rescue bill, and I believe that Congress should work quickly to pass legislation to aid our ailing economy, this is a leadership challenge for reform. This bailout should not just be a rescue;
it should also be a reform of the system. This attempt still places too much
emphasis on rescue, and not enough on reform. This bailout does not contain enough help for ordinary Americans, and this bill is supposed to be about economic rescue, not corporate welfare. Even worse, foreign companies would also be beneficiaries of taxpayer largesse. As such, I can not support it."
I believe it! argh...I wish the democrats could just be a little "tougher" and less negotiable to what the other side wants. I am also saddened by all the women who simply refer to this as whining.
Posted by: bridge | October 02, 2008 at 02:39 PM
I believe it! argh...I wish the democrats could just be a little "tougher" and less negotiable to what the other side wants. I am also saddened by all the women who simply refer to this as whining.
Posted by: bridge | October 02, 2008 at 02:39 PM