Extreme proposals would slash hundreds of millions of dollars from programs and services for women and families – must be nonstarter for negotiations

WASHINGTON, D.C. – September 19, 2023 – Today, the National Partnership for Women & Families outlined details of the proposed Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24) appropriations bills put forward by House Republican leaders which include a nearly all-of-government attack on women’s economic security, reproductive care access, and quality health care. These proposed bills would slash domestic spending bills across-the-board – including hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts made by zeroing out or severely weakening programs aimed at protecting women’s health, reproductive health services, equitable workplaces, and pay. In a new fact sheet, the National Partnership calls out the extreme and dangerous proposals that would be devastating for all women, particularly women of color, and their families.

“While infighting between different GOP factions seems focused on whether their extreme cuts are extreme enough, one thing is clear: supporting economic security and health care for our country’s women and families is not their priority,” said Jocelyn C. Frye, President of the National Partnership for Women & Families. “Their proposals outline an all-out assault on women’s quality of life and ability to thrive in our economy. These cuts are unacceptable, and as our leaders in Congress and the administration work to avoid the impending shutdown, we urge them to center the ongoing challenges facing working families.”

After agreeing to a bipartisan, bicameral deal that set spending levels for FY24, House Republican leaders are working against the best interests of working families and threatening a government shutdown if they don’t get their way. By making drastic cuts to critical programs to support working families, House Republicans’ funding proposals would undermine workers’ rights and the ability for women to thrive in the workplace. Additionally, their funding proposal aims to further restrict access to abortion and reproductive health services by severely hampering the federal governments’ ability to cover and support abortion care – restrictions that will hurt low-income women and women of color the most, as well as young people, immigrants, people with disabilities, and those living in rural areas.

Furthermore, the pending proposals continue attacks on women’s health by proposing extreme cuts and disinvestments in key programs to address women’s health quality and access to care, the maternal health crisis, the nation’s health workforce shortage and health inequities.

Specifically, these deeply problematic proposals are focused on:

Labor & Employment

• Eliminating funding for the Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau.
• Cutting $75 million for the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division.
• Cutting $35 million for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Women’s Health

• Eliminating funding for multiple programs that support diversity in the health care workforce, including the Health Careers Opportunity Program (HCOP), the Centers of Excellence (COE), and the Nursing Workforce Diversity (NWD).
• Ending all funding for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
• Cutting nearly $800 million from government programs that fund maternal and child health and improve women’s health care, including the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant and the Office on Women’s Health. Close to 60 million women and children benefited from the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant through HRSA in FY21 – 92 percent of all pregnant women and 98 percent of all infants.
• Drastically cutting key health equity programs such as the Office of Minority Health and the Minority HIV/AIDS Initiative.
• Slashing funding for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services by $798 million. Thirty-one million adult women receive Medicaid – the majority of adult beneficiaries. Women are also the majority of Medicare recipients.

Reproductive Rights

• Restricting the federal government’s ability to cover and support abortion care by prohibiting:
• Federal dollars from covering abortion care for those who receive health care or health insurance through the U.S. government.
• The Department of Defense from implementing a rule that allows servicemembers to take leave to travel for abortion care.
• The Department of Veterans Affairs from implementing a rule that allows the VA to provide abortions in cases of rape, incest, or when the life or health of a veteran is endangered. Over 400,000 women veterans live in states that have banned or are likely to ban abortion.
• Abortion counseling in certain programs administered under HHS.
• Eliminating funding for Title X Family Planning. In 2021 Title X served more than 1.6 million people.
• Eliminating all federal funding for Planned Parenthood. In 2022, Planned Parenthood and its affiliates served 2.13 million patients.
• Reinstating medically unnecessary restrictions on and undermining the FDA’s authority over mifepristone.
• Reinstating and making permanent the Global Gag Rule.

A full fact sheet on the House GOP’s proposal can be found here.

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