SALON

Friday, Feb 10, 2006 8:41 PM UTC

Surprise! Bush budget sucks for women

The fiscal year 2007 budget cuts funding for almost every program with "women" in the title.

By

Topics: Broadsheet, Budget Showdown, Love and Sex,

If you’ve skimmed President Bush’s $2.77 trillion budget for fiscal year 2007 and felt your eyes glaze over, that’s understandable. The thing is a morass of jargon and seven-digit numbers, and the defunding of social programs to boost the defense budget is depressing. Much more useful, if still disheartening, is this primer from Women’s Policy Inc., comparing various programs’ funding levels with their funding in recent years. We’ve reviewed it carefully, and it seems safe to guess that the Bush administration applied the following rule of thumb when writing the budget: If the title of the program has the word “women” in it, cut funding.

Among the programs for women that are getting reduced funding this year: the Violence Against Women Act Prevention and Prosecution programs (cut by $29.5 million); the United Nations Development Fund for Women (funding slashed by more than two-thirds, from $2.5 million to $1 million); the Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau (cut by $460,000); the Small Business Administration’s Women’s Business Centers (cut by $500,000); the Public Health Service’s Office on Women’s Health (cut by $72,000); the National Women’s Business Council (cut by $7,000); and the Women’s Educational Equity Act programs (eliminated entirely, after being funded at $2.96 million last year). And while the National Domestic Violence Hotline will get the same funding it got in 2006 ($3 million), the budget for actual battered women’s shelters will get its budget trimmed by $1 million.

(There are a few bright spots for women in the Bush budget: It proposes $7.3 million for a Women’s Justice and Empowerment initiative to prevent violence against women in Africa, while funding for programs to prevent human trafficking would be more than doubled to $8.5 million. Plus, the Middle East Partnership Initiative, part of whose mission is to encourage empowerment of women, got an extra $10 million.)

Another word the administration seems to have looked for when seeking places to cut funds: “family.” The budget will reduce funding for the following family programs: Office of Child Support Enforcement (cut by $900 million); international family planning programs (cut by $138 million); Title X, the nation’s family planning program (cut by $3 million); the Adolescent Family Life program (cut by $740,000); and the William F. Goodling Even Start Family Literacy programs (eliminated entirely, after being funded at $100 million last year). The United Nations Population Fund would get $25 million, $9 million less than last year — though that doesn’t necessarily matter much in any immediate sense, since “the administration has blocked the release of all UNFPA funds in fiscal years 2002 through 2005,” and it’s unclear whether the fund will get this year’s money, either, unless the U.S. and the U.N. can resolve their disagreement over funding abortion services.

In FY 2007, $250 million will be provided for programs to support healthy marriages and responsible fatherhood — which is good news, but in order to find that funding, the budget took money away from other family assistance funds, notably the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families high performance bonus and the Out-of-Wedlock Birth Reduction bonus.

In the preamble to this “economic blueprint,” the president calls the budget “compassionate.” There, don’t you feel better?

Page Rockwell is Salon's editorial project manager. More Page Rockwell.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 2 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
207 points208 points | 7 comments
vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the persecuted late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
144 points145 points | comment
vote
Obstruction will ruin the GOP: Playing politics and abusing the system can excite the extremes, but it's a recipe for long-term political disaster
47 points48 points | 8 comments
vote
Loaded terminology like "entitlements" and "welfare" skews the debate and alters America. How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government.
57 points58 points | 23 comments
vote
With the help of Photoshop, artist Yao Lu has made shanshui — traditional ink paintings — of China's landfills
23 points24 points | comment

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations