Carly Fiorina on Thursday reiterated her claims that Hillary Clinton’s proposed economic policies would hurt women and other constituency groups Clinton says she wants to help.
“The extreme poverty rate among women is at the highest level ever recorded. The number of women living in poverty is at the highest level in 20 years,” she said on CNN’s “New Day.” “And every single policy that Hillary Clinton is now proposing demonstrably we have evidence that suggests causes women to be fired, not to be hired. The record is very clear on that.”
During Wednesday night’s GOP debate, Fiorina had also said, “92% of the jobs lost during Barack Obama’s first term belonged to women.”
According to the official government numbers, there were actually more women working at the end of Obama’s first term than when he started. In January 2009, there were 66.5 million American women working in non-farm jobs, compared to January 2013 when there were 66.9 million. That’s an increase of over 400,000 working females in Obama’s first term.
Fiorina’s statistic was one used by 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney during his presidential campaign, which Politifact ruled was numerically true at the time in early 2012, but not something that could be blamed on Obama’s policies “since his term overlapped with the phase of recessions that typically sees greater job losses by women than men.”
Further, the jobs picture started improving for women after April 2012 when Politifact did its analysis and the statistic had changed by the time Obama’s first term ended.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz also attacked Obama on Wednesday night for hurting women economically with his policies.
“Under Barack Obama, 3.7 million women have entered poverty. … Under Barack Obama and the big government economy, the median wage for women has dropped $733,” Cruz said.
CNN’s Reality Check team verified Cruz’s claim, finding “he’s accurate that based on the numbers, women’s median incomes are worse off than they were in 2008.”
It’s a potentially potent argument for Republicans to make against Democrats as they pursue the White House.
“The facts are clear: Women have been hit hardest by this recession and lackluster economic recovery. That’s just a fact. Women are suffering more than men and by the way, African-Americans are suffering as well,” Fiorina said Thursday on “New Day.” “All the groups that progressives claim to be helping are being hurt in this Barack Obama term and of course Hillary Clinton is going to double-down on every single one of these policies.”
