Thursday afternoon, by a vote of 273 to 156, the House of Representatives failed to gather the 290 votes needed to override the president’s veto of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program bill (SCHIP). Both the Senate and House have previously cast bipartisan votes to reauthorize this ten-year-old program and to extend coverage to an additional ten million children who live in low income families with no health insurance, even though the average annual cost of the expansion was less than three weeks of Iraq war spending.

Bush’s veto required that two-thirds of the 435 House members vote to override the veto before the bill can become law. Despite overwhelming public support and the backing of many in the medical and health insurance industries, the president and his House allies have carried on a campaign of mistruths and unfounded allegations, leading to the bill’s demise this afternoon.

NOW decries the cruelty of denying the most basic health care to children whose parents cannot afford health insurance. The 156 House members — 154 Republicans and two Democrats - who voted against the override have let down not only the vulnerable children of this nation, but also put an undue burden on single parents and low-income families who can only pray their children do not get sick or hurt.

“It’s purely political,” says NOW President Kim Gandy. “George Bush has no trouble funding a government sponsored, ’socialized’ war, yet bristles at the thought of helping poor children who need health care, branding the expanded SCHIP as a program leading us down the slippery slope to ’socialized’ medicine.” In his book it’s fine to provide subsidies, tax breaks and federal grants to industries, businesses and colleges to ensure their economic health and well-being, but kids just don’t count.

The vetoed bill would have extended health insurance coverage to an additional four million low income children and would have cost $35 billion over five years, an average of $7 billion per year, compared to the $12 billion every month that George Bush is spending in Iraq. The President says he might sign a proposal to reauthorize the program and increase the spending by $5 billion — but with inflation, that amount would represent a reduction in real dollars, which means that 1 million children who are currently covered by the states with SCHIP funding will be kicked out of the health insurance plan. The failed SCHIP legislation was already a shell of its former self because the final proposal did not include the House-passed language allowing legal immigrant children to participate in the program.

“It’s hard to imagine that Bush, his Cabinet, and all 154 of those Republicans in Congress are enjoying ‘government funded’ healthcare, subsidized by the same taxpayers who overwhelmingly supported continuing and enhancing the SCHIP program,” said Gandy. “It may be time for those 154 members of Congress to go without health care for awhile…or get lost. They have let down the children and the parents in their Congressional districts who are wondering where they will ever get the money or the job that will enable them to provide health care for their families,” said Gandy.

October 18 marks the tenth anniversary of the National Organization for Women Foundation’s Annual Love Your Body Day (LYBD). For the past ten years, the Love Your Body Campaign has promoted healthy body images for women and girls through creative actions and consumer education. The campaign calls for women and girls to be in control of what makes them feel healthy and comfortable with their bodies, on their own terms and not based on unrealistic images promoted by advertisers and the mass media.

“Sex, Stereotypes and Beauty: The ABCs and Ds of Commercial Images of Women” is a new slide show presentation created by the NOW Foundation and available beginning today through the Love Your Body website for viewing and download. This presentation illustrates ways that advertisers and the media enforce unrealistic beauty standards, sexual ideals and gender stereotypes that girls and women are expected to follow.

“‘Sex, Stereotypes and Beauty’ is a fast-paced and compelling way for women and girls to identify and think about the impact that these images have on their health and well-being, and what can they do about it,” NOW Foundation President Kim Gandy says. “Using examples from current advertisements, we brought these images together to present them in a way that will spark discussion. We hope that our chapters, or anyone visiting our website, will present the slide show, forward it to their friends, and use it to strategize ways to combat the daily barrage of messages that say to women and girls ‘You’re not good enough.’”

Hollywood and the fashion, cosmetics and diet industries work hard to make women believe that our bodies are unacceptable and need constant improvement. Print ads and television commercials reduce women to body parts — lips, legs, breasts — airbrushed and touched up to meet impossible standards. TV shows tell women and teenage girls that cosmetic surgery is a necessary step toward positive self-esteem.

“Is it any wonder that 80% of U.S. women are dissatisfied with their appearance?” asks Gandy. “The NOW Foundation is committed to empowering women to say, ‘Enough is enough!’ We want all women and girls to be positive about their bodies and not feel pressured by the media’s negative portrayals and pressure to conform — to look or feel a particular way.”

Common assumptions about mothers’ and caregivers’ responsibilities frequently affect their salary, raises, and job opportunities, and we are gratified that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, today in New Hampshire, made this and other work/life balance issues a central part of her campaign platform. According to many reports, some employers routinely make pay and promotion decisions about employees based on an assumption that caregiving responsibilities for children or elders will affect performance, even if that has not actually been the case. “These assumptions are deeply engrained in stereotypes about women as caregivers, and they affect the pay and employment status of millions of women, and some men as well,” said NOW President Kim Gandy. “This is discrimination, pure and simple, and it contributes to the enormous wage gap between mothers and non-mothers.” Clinton also committed to providing paid sick days for all workers, expanding the Family and Medical Leave Act to cover an additional 13 million workers, and creating incentives for states to create paid leave programs. With specifics on how the cost of the programs would be covered, Clinton laid out a broad agenda that also included increased funding for child care and workplace flexibility initiatives. “NOW was the first organization to pass a resolution supporting ‘Homemaker’s Bill of Rights’ in 1978, and to this day we fight for caregivers’ rights, but no presidential candidate has ever made such an effort to put families first,” said Gandy.

October 12, 2007

On Sept. 28, the Judicial Council of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals formally reprimanded U.S. District Court Judge Samuel B. Kent of Galveston, Texas, suspended him for four months, and reassigned many of his pending cases to other judges. This nearly unprecedented action came after a lengthy secret investigation of allegations that the judge had sexually harassed and inappropriately touched a female employee. During their investigation, the committee expanded the inquiry to include additional complaints against Judge Kent.

Based on the seriousness of the allegations and the actions of the Judicial Council, the National Organization for Women (NOW) has requested, through Hon. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), a member of the committee, that the House Judiciary Committee open an investigation into the accusations against Judge Kent. If they find that Judge Kent violated federal law, including federal civil rights law, we will urge the committee to begin impeachment proceeding.

“There is an Alice in Wonderland feel to this process. The Fifth Circuit’s investigation of its own judge was completely secret, none of the findings were revealed to the public, not even after the investigation was complete, the public ‘reprimand’ contained no details, and all documents uncovered in the investigation are sealed,” said NOW President Kim Gandy, an attorney admitted to practice in the Fifth Circuit. “To make matters worse, the Fifth Circuit says that even if a judicial panel finds that a judge did commit a crime, it is not obligated to refer it to law enforcement. Federal judges are protected by law from the law.”

“This judicial panel seems to be protecting its own. The reported punishment — a four-month paid vacation and a slap on the wrist — seems extraordinarily light, and doesn’t seem to ‘fit the crime’ as it has been reported in the press. His punishment, for all practical purposes, has been a taxpayer-paid four month vacation and a reduced workload at full pay. When he returns to the bench in a few months, he will resume his normal duties, including ruling on cases involving sex discrimination and sexual harassment. If that happens, and he is indeed a sexual harasser, it would be an injustice to every woman whose case could come before his court,” said Gandy.

Citadel Broadcasting is paving the way for the return of misogynist poster boy Don Imus to the public airwaves. If the deal goes through, Imus’ debut will be Dec. 1, and already there’s talk that the show may go into syndication. Imus was fired by CBS and NBC last spring for his derogatory and misogynist comments about the Rutgers women’s basketball team.

The National Organization for Women was the first women’s organization to speak out against Don Imus’ insulting and degrading language directed at those accomplished young women, generating over 30,000 message through our website. In April, NOW and other civil rights organizations went to New York City and told CBS and MSNBC that it was time for Imus to go.

“CBS and MSNBC did the right thing and fired Don Imus. Not one but two major media corporations understood the cost of hate speech and the value of public confidence,” said NOW President Kim Gandy. “Now, after a six-month vacation and a seven-figure settlement, Imus is looking for a comeback with another big corporation. It’s like a bad dream. Didn’t they learn anything? No one has a right to a platform on the radio — if they did, we’d have more talk shows than we have airtime.”

So what does it say to the public when a big corporation provides a stage for someone with a history of using the public airwaves for hateful and racist speech? It says they’ve made a choice about the kind of audience they want, and women and people of color aren’t included.

NOW has alerted supporters so they can write to Citadel Broadcasting urging them to reconsider, and to take a stand against hate speech.

The health and well-being of our children should be a national priority. Unfortunately, today President Bush once again showed our country and the world how little he values families and children with his veto of the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (H.R. 976). This bill, which would have reauthorized and improved the ten-year-old State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and provided more than 10 million low-income children with desperately needed health care, was vetoed by the president. The cruel message to millions of hardworking parents whose jobs don’t provide health insurance or wages that allow them to buy private insurance policies is this: if your children get sick or are injured, we really don’t care.

“Millions of families, especially single mothers with children, have once again been cast aside by George Bush,” says NOW President Kim Gandy. “This was his opportunity to welcome bipartisan legislation ensuring that 6.6 million low-income kids have ongoing health care, and allowing nearly 4 million more low-income children to become enrolled in the state-run programs. For single parents, pregnant women and low-income families just barely getting by, this program has literally been a life saver. No child should go without health care simply because her or his parents are employed in jobs without benefits and there isn’t enough money to pay both the rent and the doctor. George Bush’s priorities are out of line with the rest of the country; sadly, this is no surprise to those of us who work daily to improve the lives of women and their families.”

It is ironic that taxpayers have been assessed almost a trillion dollars on the Iraq invasion and occupation, but have no say about using a piddling amount by comparison to provide a modest $35-$50 billion to expand SCHIP to cover millions more kids. The truth is, for what we spend in a single week on the war, 800,000 children could get health care for a year. A bipartisan majority of both houses of Congress voted for our children’s health care, but the veto pen makes final passage an uphill battle, especially in the House of Representatives where the final tally was two dozen votes shy of the 290 needed for a veto override.

While the National Organization for Women applauds the tenacious bipartisan efforts in Congress, which voted to expand healthcare for millions of children, at the same time we are disappointed that the bill failed to support the inclusion of legal immigrant children and pregnant immigrant women. The National Coalition for Immigrant Women’s Rights (NCIWR), of which NOW is a member, sought but failed to get support for a final bill that removed the punitive and mandatory five-year waiting period for new legal immigrant children. Although the House bill included provisions from the Immigrant Children’s Health Improvement Act (ICHIA), giving states the option to provide immediate health coverage to lawfully residing low-income immigrant children and pregnant women through Medicaid and SCHIP, the Senate insisted that this provision be removed in the final bill.

“It is shameful that our president, who enjoys government-subsidized health care, vetoed the SCHIP renewal, but also that Congress dropped coverage for legal immigrant children in hopes of avoiding the veto pen,” says Gandy. “These are hard-working, low-income families, who are legally in this country but cannot afford to buy health care for their children. But they are being ignored and told to wait five years. Without adequate, essential health care, these children and pregnant women face an uncertain future,” said Gandy.

NOW will ask Congress to override the president’s veto, but we will also continue to fight for real health protection legislation that promotes basic health care for ALL low-income families, including documented and undocumented children, single parents and pregnant women. SCHIP is not perfect, but we believe it is a start.

With a more women-friendly president and Congress after 2008, NOW anticipates - and will promote - major improvements in public financing of health care in our country.

Join us for our 2007 annual conference. Our keynote speaker will be Jessica Valenti, blogger (www.feministing.com) and author of ‘Full Frontal Feminism’. Lt. Governor Elizabeth Roberts will give an opening welcome. Deb Ruggiero, host of radio’s “Rhode Island’s Amazing Women”, will be speaking. Stay tuned for more details.