From the Office of Senator Kerry

Wednesday, April 4, 2001

Washington, DC – Senators John F. Kerry (D-MA) and Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) held a press conference today to hold President Bush accountable for a budget that negatively impacts women through issues such as Social Security, Medicare, taxes, child care and pension security. They were joined by Linda Chavez-Thompson, Executive Vice-President, AFL-CIO, Chair of the National Committee on Pay Equity, Nancy Duff Campbell, Co-President, National Women's Law Center, and Heidi Hartmann, President, Institute for Women's Policy Research.

"We all remember Governor Bush talking about broadening the Republican Party, reaching out to women, promising moderation and bipartisanship, standing up as a compassionate conservative – but here we are 100 days into his term as President and it seems the only tone he's changed is his own. There is nothing moderate, compassionate, or conservative, about a tax cut that puts at risk a course of fiscal discipline and leaves out almost completely millions of our sisters, our mothers, our grandmothers, and our daughters.

On the campaign trail, George W Bush said that "W" stood for "Women" -- today it appears that "W" stands for "worry" - women who need to worry about their pensions, about their Social Security, and about the fact that in many cases they get entirely left out of the Bush tax cut.

"There is an underlying question of what the Bush tax cut will not do for working women - and that is a basic question of fairness. At least 3.1 million women raising children as a single parent, or 36% of all single mothers and their families, will receive no tax benefit from the Bush plan. At least 1.3 million black single mothers and 630,000 Hispanic single mothers and their families, representing almost half of the black and Hispanic women raising children as a single parent, will not benefit from the President's plan.

"If President Bush is truly committed to reaching out to all Americans, if he doesn't want to, in his words, pick winners and losers in his tax cut, he ought to support that effort to make this tax cut that much fairer for millions of the working women of this country."