FactCheck.org and the Washington Post slammed the White House, as well as Democrats in Congress, for turning budgetary disputes into campaign slogans aimed at female voters.
Democrats have called a bill passed by House Republicans last week "an assault on women’s health." The bill would prevent student loan rates from doubling—something the president and Democrats have made a campaign point in recent weeks—and would fund the measure by cutting the Prevention and Public Health Fund provisions of the Affordable Care Act.
"The truth is that the fund in question wasn’t set up specifically for women’s health programs, and we could find no concrete evidence that it has paid anything to gender-specific health programs so far," FactCheck.org said of the student aid program.
The Washington Post’s fact checkers also reviewed House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s claim that the GOP is "going to make an assault on women’s health, make another assault on women’s health, continue our assault on women’s health and pay for this with prevention initiatives that are in effect right now for childhood immunization; for screening for breast cancer, for cervical cancer; and for initiatives to reduce birth defects."
The problem, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R., Ohio) said, is that the student loans fund included no money for women’s health. The newspaper agrees:
From Pelosi’s statement, one could imagine a wholesale "assault" to strip funding for women’s health programs. But in fact, there are virtually no specific programs aimed at women currently in the fund … For the moment this smacks of political opportunism."