WIC serves nearly 40% of all infants in the United States, but the program is in jeopardy by House Republicans as nearly two million parents and young children could be denied WIC assistance by September.
Due to higher than expected participation and food costs, the White House is deeply concerned about the urgent need to fully fund the WIC program by 2024. This is even more urgent given that “infant mortality is linked to the health status of women with healthier mothers having healthier babies” and healthier babies are more likely to survive childhood. Yet House Republicans have fumbled with funding for women, infants, and children this year, but their chaotic approach to government has increased the threat they pose to WIC at a time when needs are increasing.
The current inability to pass a budget that includes WIC jeopardizes nutritional security for millions of women, infants, and children.
WIC used to be bipartisan
“For 25 years, it (WIC) has been a no-brainer at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue,” Domestic Policy Council Director Neera Tanden said during a call with reporters that PoliticusUSA participated in. “There has been support from Congress to make employment available to every eligible person who applies. The Biden-Harris administration has repeatedly asked Congress to fully fund WIC in fiscal year 2024. Congress has not done this yet. If Republicans in Congress pass the budget without fully funding WIC, states will have no choice but to reduce the number of people they serve.”
The Republicans in the House of Representatives cannot agree on a budget, which is why they are working on Continuing Resolutions. The problem with this approach for WIC is that it gives food banks, mothers and other vulnerable people less certainty about the future and the longer this continues, the uncertainty will require greater cuts in aid.
“For nearly 50 years, we were able to provide the funding needed to help everyone eligible to participate, no matter which party controlled the White House or Congress,” Georgia Mitchell, Interim President and Chief Executive Officer of the National WIC Association, said. “If there was a need, that need was met. Today, however, that compact is on very shaky ground. Increasing participation and higher food costs means WIC needs more funding to do its work. The Biden administration has recognized the need and asked Congress for additional funding. However, that request came months ago and Congress has not acted even worse; some in Congress are proposing hundreds of millions of dollars in funding cuts.
Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Xochitl Torres Small explained how the CRs threaten the program:
“Through the two recent continuing resolutions, Congress allowed USDA to more quickly direct state and current funding. But what they haven’t done is pay the difference over the course of the year,” she said during the call. “And that puts states and mothers and children at risk and forces them to hold on to the hopes and prayers that Congress is going to express before the resources run out. If Congress does not provide the necessary funding now when they eventually approve a full year’s appropriation, the impact of the cuts would be magnified because all of the cuts would have to be absorbed in the final months of that year. So between April and September.”
“This is the extent of the problem. If Congress were to fund the program for the rest of the year, relative to what they do in the congressional resolution or in the follow-up resolution, there would be a billion-dollar deficit. It’s a month and a half of benefits for all pregnant and new mothers, babies and toddlers scheduled today. This is especially troubling because WIC serves nearly 40% of all infants in the United States.”
States will likely have to put applicants on waiting lists to reduce costs, which would start with postpartum women who are not breastfeeding, and then children one to five years old. IF there is still not enough money, the cuts will hit pregnant women, breastfeeding women and babies.
Why is the White House sounding the alarm? The deputy secretary said that with a $1 billion shortfall, it is likely that the waitlist could affect all categories.
What is at risk:
“Families who participate in WIC have longer and safer pregnancies with reduced preterm birth and infant mortality,” said Grace Hou, Illinois Deputy Governor for Health and Human Services.
Yet a new analysis from the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows: “If Congress does not do this and continues WIC’s current funding level for the remainder of the budget year, WIC will face a deficit of roughly $1 billion.”
The analysis linked above also includes a state-by-state breakdown.
In the larger context of the kind of country and people we are:
All of this is happening within the broader context of Republicans claiming to care so much about babies that they are trying to force women and girls into medical torture, pain, suffering and health crises.
With WIC, Republicans have an opportunity to do something concrete for babies and pregnant women, and instead of taking action, they allow uncertainty and fear to prevail.
Last spring, Republicans in the House of Representatives passed food stamps as part of the debt ceiling deal and followed that up with proposed cuts to WIC funds in the USDA’s annual spending bill.
Republicans justify these cuts as necessary because they want to reduce costs, but they don’t try to reduce costs in truly impactful ways, like cutting corporate tax giveaways or oil and gas subsidies, or putting the right amount of collect taxes from the rich. .
For a party that claims to care so much about babies that it has stolen the individual freedom of women and girls and that in certain Republican-led states controls and legally intimidates anyone who helps women or girls get the abortion medical care they need have, she simply doesn’t. It does not make sense that they do not want to feed pregnant and postpartum women (for example, nursing mothers), babies and young children.
WIC funding should have been priority one for Republicans in the House of Representatives, but instead they are conducting an impeachment inquiry based on Trump-driven fiction about President Biden, leaving pregnant women, infants, breastfeeding mothers and children are put at risk.
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