In the case of today’s long-term deficit-reduction negotiations in Congress –- currently being deliberated by the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, or “super committee” –- Congress is Dwight, Nov. 23 is Dwight’s 5 p.m. (the sequester deadline, i.e., the trigger mechanism that would make $1.2 trillion across-the-board cuts), and both scenarios can be nipped in the bud by their respective creators.

Time is running out for the super committee, appointed to cut at least $1.2 trillion from the federal deficit over the next decade, and if — as many news outlets are predicting — they fail to come up with a solid plan within the next nine days, Congress will plan to slash $600 billion from defense spending and $600 billion from domestic programs excluding Social Security and Medicaid, including cuts to Medicare payments to hospitals and other providers, come the 2013 budget.

The American Independent recently reported on how certain GOP presidential candidates’ proposed tax-policy plans would disproportionately affect women, who tend to earn lower wages and depend more on entitlement programs than men. This week, TAI takes a look at how the super committee’s proposal could disproportionately impact women.

What’s on the table?

Reporting that has emerged from the closed-door super committee meetings reveals the six Democrats on the panel are generally insistent on raising revenues from tax increases; wish to end the Bush-era tax cuts; and preserve Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The six Republicans, meanwhile, have slowly begun to discuss revenues but are opposed to achieving them through tax cuts; want to make permanent the Bush-era tax cuts; and are pushing to restructure how Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are paid for in the future.

Roll Call details the latest in negotiations: Last week panel member Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) proposed a $1.2 trillion plan comprising $700 billion in cuts and $500 billion in revenues (half of the revenues would come from $250 billion in “tax code reform’). The most recent Democratic offer is a $2.3 trillion reduction plan over 10 years involving $1 trillion in revenues (including tax hikes) and $400 billion in “entitlement reform.”

Still they remain at an impasse.

But as Politico recently reported, despite having the power to dismantle the doomsday device, the president won’t take it. According to a White House statement, on Friday Obama called super committee co-chairs Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Jeb. Hensarling (R-Texas) to tell them he will refuse attempts to override the automatic cuts if the panel can’t complete the task. (In the “Office” episode, Dwight makes the same promise after the staff does fail, but he caves at the 11th hour.)

“The sequester was agreed to by both parties to ensure there was a meaningful enforcement mechanism to force a result from the Committee,” Obama said in the statement. “Congress must not shirk its responsibilities.”

Lobbying ladies

One prediction if the super committee fails is that industries and special-interest groups will spend a year before the trigger takes effect lobbying Congress to reconsider cuts to specific programs. The Hill forecasts heavy lobbying from the Pentagon, defense contractors, liberal activists and labor unions.

Women’s advocacy groups have already begun voicing suggestions as to how to trim spending without devastating the neediest Americans, many of whom happen to be single women with children.

Early this month, National Organization for Women (NOW) President Terry O’Neill blasted the super committee’s “irresponsible proposals,” referring to assumptions the Republican members on the committee are pushing for Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan-style changes to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security while, at the same time, opposing tax increases on corporations and millionaires. O’Neill similarly censured proposals she had heard from the Democratic side:

[I]t’s beyond distressing to see some Democrats knuckling under and now embracing plans that would cause great hardship on retirees — mainly women, particularly women of color, as well as people with severe disabilities and our oldest seniors. The Democrats’ proposal would change the [Social Security Cost-of-Living adjustment] (COLA) so that monthly benefits are dramatically reduced, further impoverishing the millions of seniors who depend exclusively on their Social Security check. Medicare would be cut by $400 billion (on top of the $500 billion savings adopted in the Affordable Care Act), and Medicaid would be cut by $75 billion. … There’s not much worse than taking from the most vulnerable in society to pay for a deficit caused by a failure to tax millionaires and billionaires and waging two unfunded wars.

So what does NOW want the super committee to do?

• Preserve COLA and minimize cuts to programs that disproportionately serve and employ women, among them Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly referred to as food stamps; college-tuition-assistance programs, child care; and family planning programs.
• End Bush-era tax cuts.
• Eliminate the payroll tax cap, which would raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans.

The Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), a think thank that focuses on women’s domestic issues, has ideas of how to improve women’s economic standing in this country — ideas that likely contradict proposals the super committee members have been tossing around. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, although men have regained nearly 30 percent of the jobs they lost during the recession, women have regained only 10 percent of the jobs they lost. In July, men earned 136,000 jobs; women lost 19,000.

Among IWPR proposals, as laid out in a September 2011 report titled “Recommendations for Improving Women’s Employment in the Recovery”:

• Make federal transfers available to state and local governments to replace lost revenues and allow them to hire back the teachers, case workers, nurses and others they have laid off.
• Expand the length of the school day and school year.
• Create an “Urban Conservation Corps” — programs partnering labor unions with inner-city youth with the goal of bring skills and employment opportunities to young women and men.
• Fund child care.
• Adopt tax incentives for businesses that offer their employees “work-life balance.”
• Expand unemployment insurance benefits for workers with reduced working hours.
• Expand employment for women in male-dominated fields, such as construction, transportation and green energy
• Increase funding for jobs that provide direct care to children, disabled adults and the elderly. (According to the Economic Policy Institute (PDF), investments in physical infrastructure and human capital, such as early childhood development, education, health care, job training, would create jobs for women and men and contribute to long-term economic growth.)

Over at the National Women’s Law Center, the general position on the super committee proceedings is that the panel should promote job growth and strengthen the economy while simultaneously protecting programs that women and their families depend on now and in old age — women in general depend on Medicare and Medicaid at higher rates than men, and two-thirds of SNAP recipients are female, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (PDF).

Specifically the NWLC wants:

• Reduced tax breaks for oil and gas industries and corporations that move jobs and profits overseas.
• New tax brackets for annual income starting above $1 million and taxing income from capital gains and dividends at the same rate as income from work for taxpayers with income above $1 million.
• A small tax on financial transactions such as stock trades — to raise revenue but also to discourage short-term speculation. According to the Economic Policy Institute and the Century Foundation, a 0.5 percent tax on stock transactions would raise about $77 billion per year; a 0.5 percent tax on all financial transactions (options, futures, swap transactions) would raise approximately $150 billion per year.
• An extension on federal emergency unemployment benefits.

But for now, what women want — what all Americans want, and they all want different things — is in the hands of 12 under-pressure representatives and senators. And the clock is ticking.

Photo: Flickr/AMagill

Nearing the bottom of the pile is Herman Cain — only 25 percent of the former pizza chain magnate’s donations above $200 have come from women. Both Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul have collected less from women (about 24 percent and 16 percent, respectively). About 33.5 percent and 29.6 percent of Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s donations have come from women, respectively.

Fittingly, the tax proposals released by the leading GOP candidates — Cain, Perry and Romney — disproportionately affect women in the way they raise taxes on lower- and middle-income Americans, eliminate poverty aids and cut child-insurance programs, according to various analyses of the plans and expert input gathered by The American Independent.

Thus far, only Cain and Perry have revealed the most detailed plans, and because women are disproportionately likely to be single parents and to have lower wages, smaller pensions and more medical problems, they are expected to fare worse under these plans than their male counterparts.

The gender-wage gap and its relevancy to tax-policy discussions

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (PDF), in 2010, women who were full-time wage and salary workers earned 81 percent of what men earned (median weekly earnings for women were $669, and $824 for men). The female-to-male earnings ratio has hovered around 80 to 81 percent since 2004, up from 62 percent in 1979.

Last week, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report (PDF) showing women make up 49 percent of the total workforce but represent 59 percent of low-wage workers -– this despite the fact that more women than men finish high school and earn bachelor’s degrees. And according to a new report (PDF) by the Martin Prosperity Institute, women hold 52.3 percent of “creative class” jobs –- engineers, doctors, lawyers, journalists, teachers, etc. -– but in these jobs, earn an average of $48,007, while men earn an average of $82,009. Controlling for hours worked and education, creative class men out-earn creative class women by 49.2 percent.

According to the 2008-2010 American Community Survey, about 29.2 percent of families whose income in the past 12 months was below the federal poverty level were families headed by single women. It gets worse depending on the presence of young children: 38.1 percent of women-run households with children under 18 were below poverty; 46.1 percent of households with children under 5 were below poverty. In comparison, only 10.5 percent of all American families — and only 5.1 percent of married-couple families — in this survey were making below the poverty level. The aforementioned GAO report found single women with children had an average household income of about $27,000.

Income disparities do not stop at wages, however. Women tend to live longer, they are more likely to outlive their savings and less likely to have significant retirement plans or to have the type of jobs that incur significant pensions. Thus, they disproportionately benefit from Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

According to the Social Security Administration (SSA), women represent about 57 percent of all Social Security beneficiaries age 62 and older and about 69 percent of beneficiaries over 85. In 2008, women 65 and older received an average of $11,377, compared with $14,822 for men.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation (PDF), about 56 percent of all Medicare beneficiaries are women, and women are more likely than men to report having three or more chronic conditions.

How do women fare under ‘9-9-9’?

“The ‘9-9-9 Plan’ is a jobs plan! It is revenue, it does not raise taxes on those in need.” -- from the donation page on Herman Cain’s campaign website (AreFlaten, Flickr)

THE PLAN: ‘9-9-9’

With the nation’s attention focused on Cain’s old sexual harassment charges, scrutiny of Cain’s infamous “9-9-9″ Plan is stalled for the moment. According to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center, Cain’s plan would make those earning under $50,000 pay a few thousand dollars more in taxes, while those making between half a million and $1 million would pay nearly $100,000 less in taxes. According to an analysis by the left-leaning Citizens for Tax Justice (PDF), if Cain’s plan were to go into effect today, the richest 1 percent of taxpayers would pay $210,000 less in annual taxes, while the poorest 60 percent of taxpayers would pay $2,000 more in annual taxes.

At the same time, Cain’s proposed plan is expected to raise about the same -– or potentially less –- revenue as the current tax system. Still, a recent poll of likely Iowa Caucus-goers conducted last month shows the average American making under $50,000 annually doesn’t understand the plan and believes he or she would fare better under “9-9-9.”

Cain’s plan is actually a complicated three-step process. Replacing the current tax code with a 9-percent business flat tax (or value-added tax), a 9-percent individual flat tax and a 9-percent national sales tax is only the second step in the process. And as the Tax Policy Center summarizes, combined, the three taxes are equivalent to a 25.4-percent national sales tax, with adjustments for dividends paid to tax-exempt entities and charitable contributions.

The first step in Cain’s plan, explained by The Washington Post, would actually be to cut individual and corporate tax rates to a top-25-percent rate, down from the current high of 35 percent. The third step would be to replace all federal taxes with a national sales tax.

Cain claims under “9-9-9,” Americans who fall under the federal government’s poverty level would be exempt from paying the individual income tax; however, he would eliminate the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), designed to help the working poor, and the Child Tax Credit (CTC). Additionally, he would eliminate payroll tax deductions for employers (except in unspecified “Opportunity Zones”), which currently serve as a hiring incentive. Helping out the wealthy, Cain would get rid of the estate tax and capital gains taxes. His plan, according to Edward D. Kleinbard of the Gould University of Southern California School of Law, involves a “disguised one-time 9 percent tax on existing wealth.”

More from TaxVox, the Tax Policy Center blog:

A middle income household making between about $64,000 and $110,000 would get hit with an average tax increase of about $4,300, lowering its after-tax income by more than 6 percent and increasing its average federal tax rate (including income, payroll, estate and its share of the corporate income tax) from 18.8 percent to 23.7 percent. … In Cain’s world, a typical household making more than $2.7 million would pay a smaller share of its income in federal taxes than one making less than $18,000. This would give Warren Buffet severe heartburn.

EFFECT ON WOMEN

Cain’s plan would eliminate the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which is a refundable credit designed to offset federal payroll and income taxes for low- and moderate-income working people.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), this year, working families with children with annual incomes below $36,000 to $49,000 (depending on marital status and dependents) may be eligible for the EITC. Single individuals without children who make less than $13,600 annually and married couples making less than $18,700 annually would qualify for a small EITC. In 2009, the average EITC was $2,770 for a household with children and $259 for a childless household. According to CBPP, families mostly use this tax credit to pay for necessities, home and vehicle repairs and, sometimes, additional education.

Cain would also kill the Child Tax Credit (CTC), which helps working families pay for child care costs.

According to the Urban Institute, high-working, low-income families spend $3,135 annually, or 12 percent of their income. The Institute estimates that 69 percent of children under 5 with low-income working mothers are cared for regularly by someone other than a parent, and 39 percent of these children are in child care for at least 35 hours per week.

“It would be horrifying to lose [the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit],” said Elizabeth Lower-Basch, a senior policy analyst for the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP). “That would particularly affect women.

“We have a basically progressive tax code,” she told TAI. “If we go to a flat code, it would significantly hurt low-income workers.”

Joan Entmacher, vice president for Family Economic Security at the National Women’s Law Center, where she works at promoting policies aimed at improving the economic security of low-income women and their families, told TAI that Cain’s tax proposal appears to affect women worse than the other candidates because his plan is “much harder on lower-income Americans” in the way it would raise taxes on low- and middle-income earners.

Under Cain’s plan, millionaires would get a 17.9-percent tax rate, or a 22-percent boost after taxes. But a single mother earning between $20,000 and $30,000? Her tax rate would be 24.9 percent. In other words, a single mom making $25,000 a year will have to give 25 percent of her income, or $6,250, to taxes.

Cain has proposed creating tax benefits to certain geographic areas in what he calls “Opportunity Zones” (PDF), but he has not been specific about where these zones would be or how they would work.

“Overall, you’re going to be better off if you’re making over $1 million in income, better than single mom trying to raise kids on $25,000 per year,” Entmacher said.

Terry O’Neill, an attorney and professor who is the president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), told TAI that Cain is turning his back on women, many whom depend on the tax programs he wants to eliminate.

“When Mr. Cain wants to take away the Earned Income Tax Credit, he is punishing women who sometimes work two jobs full-time, minimum-wage jobs, just to pay for food and rent,” O’Neill said.

Perry’s postcard proposal cuts more than it balances

“American families deserve a system that is low, flat and fair. They should be able to file their taxes on a postcard instead of a massive novel-length document." -- from Governor Rick Perry’s "2020 Vision: Cut, Balance & Grow" (Gage Skidmore, Flickr)

During his speech at the Corner Stone Action Dinner in Manchester, N.H., on Oct. 28, Perry repeatedly waved a blank postcard in explaining his tax and economic-policy plan. Like Cain’s plan, Perry’s plan (PDF) is more complicated than he lets on in speeches. Where they differ is in Perry’s explicit details in how Americans would pay for the substantial tax breaks on the highest earners — by eliminating deductions and cutting specific entitlement programs that especially benefit lower-income earners, and women.

THE PLAN: ‘Cut, Balance & Grow’

Taxpayers would be able to choose whether to file their taxes under the current tax code or under a new 20-percent “flat tax.” What Perry has not emphasized is that taxpayers will have to spend time — and potentially money — calculating which plan benefits them more.

Like Cain, Perry has countered claims his plan will result in disproportionately higher taxes for lower- and middle-income families. As an example, Perry points to the provision in his 20-percent flat-tax plan, where families will be eligible for “generous” exemptions of $12,500.

In his proposal, Perry takes a dig at Cain’s proposal to introduce a federal sales tax and a business value-added tax, which he calls “highly regressive,” and uses the working poor to make his case:

When added to existing federal income taxes and state and local income sales taxes, a national sales tax would be highly regressive. Low-income families spend a much higher percentage of their incomes on food and gas than do those with considerable wealth. For example, a household earning $25,000 each year would spend roughly 40% of its income on food, utilities, and health care, while a household earning $130,000 each year would pay less than 15% of its income on those three items.

But because Perry would eliminate the EITC, lower- and middle-income earners would still pay more under his plan than they do now. Using calculations made by the Tax Policy Center, The New York Times estimates single parents with two children making $9,700 annually would pay no income taxes under Perry’s plan but would not receive the $4,885 tax credit they receive under current tax law.

Perry, like Cain, would eliminate the capital gains tax.

EFFECT ON WOMEN

To pay for the plan, Perry has suggested cuts in education and nutritional programs for poor children. He has offered various suggestions for reforming Medicare, which include gradually raising the age of Medicare eligibility, alongside a gradual retirement-age increase under Social Security; paying Medicare benefits on a sliding scale based on income; or by creating bundled premium support payments that would go directly to the individual. He has also proposed block-granting Medicaid payments.

Entmacher told TAI that under Perry’s plan, taxes would go up for the working poor and what she calls the “true middle class” — households making no more than $75,000 per year.

“The Perry plan is particularly hard on single heads of households,” Entmacher said. “They do worse than the working poor.”

The others

As for the remaining GOP candidates in the pack, the one expected to win the nomination, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, has a vague plan. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) have stated support for a flat tax, and all the candidates support eliminating the estate tax.

Romney’s main tax proposal is to end taxes on interest and dividend income for people who earn less than $200,000 a year, but otherwise keep the existing tax system in place. Romney does not support a flat tax or a national sales tax, stating they would largely hurt the middle class. He supports extending most, if not all, of the Bush-era tax cuts.

All of the experts TAI spoke with agreed the tax code needs reforming. With GOP candidates vying for shorter rules in the name of simplicity, Lower-Basch thinks what the tax code actually needs is more tiers and brackets to be more fair, reasoning that households making $250,000 a year should not be taxed the same as those making $1 or $2 million a year.

After two nights of “jokes” at the expense of Palin and her family, Letterman tried to explain himself and offer something of an apology. On his June 10 show, Letterman said he was referring to Palin’s 18-year-old daughter, Bristol — not the 14-year-old daughter who actually accompanied Palin on her New York trip. Letterman said “I recognize that these are ugly” jokes. NOW agrees. Comedians in search of a laugh should really know better than to snicker about men having sex with teenage girls (or young women) less than half their age.

The organization appends a request that “all the conservatives who are fired up about sexism in the media lately will join us in calling out sexism when it is directed at women who aren’t professed conservatives,” but curiously it dredges up the old example of Rush Limbaugh mocking Chelsea Clinton instead of the very fresh and nearly omnipresent sexist jokes about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and first lady Michelle Obama. If nothing else, this negates Roger Pilon’s atypically fatuous question about Palin and Letterman: “Where is the outrage from the Left? Where are the feminists?”

The loss of the birth control provision came as a blow to Planned Parenthood, which had lobbied forcefully for it.

Despite the news, as I reported today, there is still plenty of reason for the feminist lobby to be pleased — billions and billions of them, in fact.

The bill allocates billions of dollars for education, health care, direct aid to needy families and support for state governments to maintain social programs — all items on the feminist wish list. Stimulus money will create or preserve jobs for teachers, librarians, nurses, and childcare workers around the country.

The outcome of the House bill contrast with feminist fears from just a few weeks ago, when it seemed that stimulus job creation would be confined to the male-dominated construction and energy industries. But the bill allocates only five percent of the stimulus for infrastructure, according to The Boston Globe, a figure that shrank progressively as the details of the stimulus were hashed out:

“Priorities changed,” [Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.)] said. “Someone says, ‘How about food stamps, how about early childhood education?’”

We also haven’t seen the last of the Medicaid family planning expansion. The Senate is expected to take up a stand alone version of the family planning expansion next week.

Nearly 70 years after this poster encouraged women to join the workforce, feminist organizations want to ensure that the stimulus package includes enough jobs for women. (Wikimedia Commons)

National women’s rights advocacy groups are using their newfound political clout with the Obama administration to shape the $825 billion economic stimulus package.

In late 2008, when the debate over the stimulus bill was in full swing, many feminists feared that the package would shortchange women by focusing job creation on the male-dominated construction industry. Feminist author and activist Linda Hirshman was among the first to wave a red flag in an influential New York Times op-ed. “Women represent almost half the work force — not exactly a marginal special interest group,” Hirshman wrote. “By adding a program for jobs in libraries, schools and children’s programs, the new administration can create jobs for them, too.”

Meanwhile several national women’s groups began a quiet but concerted pressure campaign on Obama and members of Congress to keep women’s economic security on the stimulus agenda.

In the bill, which passed in the house Wednesday, feminist organizations appear to have gotten much of what they wanted, including notably sizable investments in health care, education, and job training as well as billions of dollars to stabilize state budgets. For example, the bill includes $88 billion for Medicaid and $79 billion to help states continue to provide public services, according to an analysis by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. An estimated $150 billion is allocated for various educational programs from kindergarten to post-graduate education, the New York Times reported, Wednesday. These big ticket expenditures are expected to create or sustain significant numbers of jobs in female-dominated sectors of the economy, like teaching, nursing, and social work. More broadly, these figures may be an indication that feminist groups have more political clout and access with the Obama administration than they did under President Bush.

As the stimulus began to take shape, women’s groups moved quickly to cash in political capital they earned during the 2008 election. Last year, women’s organizations threw themselves into Democratic politics with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. The National Organization for Women, the largest organization of feminist activists in the United States took the unusual step of endorsing Obama for president. NOW’s main political action committee spent $239,364 to elect Democrats to Congress in 2008, compared to just $38,419 in 2004.

Planned Parenthood’s endorsement of Obama was only the second presidential endorsement in the group’s 93-year history, the first being John Kerry in 2004.

The main Planned Parenthood-allied PAC spent $556,870 on Congressional races in 2008, with 98 percent of the money going to Democrats. Other feminist groups like EMILY’S List and the National Abortion Rights Action League also rolled up their sleeves and backed the Obama ticket. As a result, Obama came to power in the debt of feminist groups for helping him get elected and expanding Democratic majority in Congress, which will be key to passing his ambitious agenda.

From Planned Parenthood’s perspective, that investment appears to have paid off, not only in the form of a pro-choice president, but also in terms of access to power.

“It’s hard to overstate the difference from having a government where there literally was no conversation to have a government reaching out on on a whole range of issues,” said Laurie Rubiner, Planned Parenthood’s vice president for public policy.

So, what’s in the package for women? “Expanding health for them, childcare, unemployment insurance, direct help in higher food stamps, and energy assistance,” said Joan Entmacher, vice president for family economic stability at the National Women’s Law Center, a non-profit, nonpartisan advocacy group that has worked closely with the Obama transition team and key members of Congress. “It also protects a lot of jobs for women in education, early education, and social work services,” she added.

“You don’t get everything you ask for,” said Entmacher, “[But] we’re pleased with the funding specifically targeted to childcare and Head Start and other investment for children with disabilities.”

Other feminist leaders are also guardedly positive about the stimulus.

“We’re pretty happy with what we’re seeing so far,” said Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, “But we’re waiting to see details.”

Asked whether the Obama administration was more friendly to feminist advocacy groups than the last administration, Gandy laughed and replied, “Are you kidding? The difference is like night and day.”

Gandy says that NOW and other women’s groups have met with Obama’s economic policy director Jason Furman and his senior aides to discuss the needs of women in the stimulus. NOW even set up a special page on its website to document their interactions with the transition team.

Having won a seat at the table, Gandy said her organization made the case for “investing in social infrastructure, like education and health.” Gandy is gratified to see a “very, very sizable investment in education,” including money set aside to train nurses and other health care professionals.

However, feminist leaders also agree that whether the stimulus package is fair to women will depend in large part on how the program is implemented. The current stimulus package includes a $79 billion Fiscal Stabilization Fund to help cash-strapped states maintain their current public services in the face of massive revenue shortfalls and increased demands on social welfare programs. Over half of the stabilization money, $39 billion, will go directly to educational institutions through existing federal formulas, according the latest summary of the bill posted on the House Appropriations Committee website; but over $25 billion is to be used for “flexible fiscal relief,” meaning that the states would have broad discretion over how to spend the money.

There will be some structural safeguards. “States won’t be able to just say we’re going to pour concrete across the entire state,” Entmacher says. But states will still have to make tough choices that will dramatically effect how women fare under the stimulus. Will governors go along with powerful local construction interests and spend money building new schools and libraries, or will they use the money to hire more teachers and librarians?

“If there’s any life in the feminist movement, every chapter of NOW would be writing to the governor,” says feminist writer Linda Hirshman.

NOW president Kim Gandy says that state and local chapters will make their voices heard. “NOW is primarily a grassroots organization,” Gandy says, “Our national operation is small compared to our state and local chapters.” She expects that local NOW chapters will start pressuring state and local politicians as soon as the plan is finalized.

The access to the new president and his top advisers feminist groups have enjoyed so far is a change from the last eight years, but only time will tell the extent of their influence. The relationship between the Obama administration and feminist groups is sure to be tested in the days ahead as the fight over the details of the stimulus heats up.