A year ago, when the Supreme Court struck down the federal right to abortion access, Republican politicians pledged to support women facing unplanned pregnancies.
Today? Republican lawmakers are literally trying to take food away from disadvantaged new moms and their children.
They’re doing so via the annual House appropriations agricultural bill, specifically the GOP-written House version that was slated for a vote this week. This legislation covers a lot of ground, including rural development grants and loans for farmers. But among its most critical, least appreciated, highest return-on-investment programs is one known as WIC (officially, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children).
WIC was created in the early 1970s to serve low-income pregnant women, new moms, babies and young children at nutritional risk. Unlike the better-known food stamp program — which allows beneficiaries to spend their assistance on almost any groceries they like — WIC targets the specific nutritional requirements of prenatal and postpartum mothers and their children up to age 5, based on legally required, regular scientific reviews of their dietary needs.
Catherine Rampell: Government incompetence is knocking eligible Americans off Medicaid
The program provides modest but evidence-based food benefits (for example, up to a dozen eggs per month per toddler). It also offers screening and referrals to other health and social services, such as breastfeeding counseling and substance-abuse programs. You know, basic stuff you’d expect a rich country to provide for low-income babies and struggling new moms.
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Historically, we’ve risen to the occasion. There’s been strong bipartisan support for WIC for decades. Every year since 1997, Congress has committed to fully funding WIC — a fancy way of saying we’ve ensured there would be enough money to serve everyone eligible who applied.
Government officials have stuck to this commitment regardless of which party controlled the White House or either chamber of Congress, “even under Republican trifectas,” according to Brookings Institution scholar Robert Greenstein. In fact, even in years in which more funding turned out to be needed than was budgeted — because a recession increased the number of families eligible or food prices unexpectedly spiked — Congress and the Agriculture Department have made sure money was available to serve anyone eligible who applied, Greenstein said.
Now that commitment might be ending.
The GOP-controlled House’s fiscal 2024 agricultural bill would either eliminate or reduce benefits for 5.3 million kids and pregnant, postpartum and breastfeeding adults, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates.
Of that total, roughly 4.6 million participants would have their benefits cut, primarily because of rollbacks of a fruit and vegetable benefit that had been expanded in 2021 based on recommendations of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. Another 650,000 to 750,000 eligible people would likely be turned away from the program entirely because of funding shortfalls.
The House’s plan to turn away or waitlist these vulnerable families, for the first time in a quarter-century, would be an astonishing break in precedent. Especially so given the timing.
The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which was almost uniformly celebrated by Republican lawmakers (including the House agricultural bill’s sponsor, Maryland Rep. Andy Harris), caused thousands of women to have babies they weren’t prepared to support. We also recently saw nationwide infant-formula shortages. Republican lawmakers (including Harris) treated this crisis as political fodder, as desperate families scoured the country to feed their newborns.
And of course we’re now roughly two years into a run of elevated inflation. This has been another crisis Republicans have mined for political advantage — and pledged to remedy — while Americans struggled to put food on the table.
As is always true, voters should pay more attention to what politicians do than to what they say.
To be clear, GOP-proposed cuts to WIC don’t seem motivated by any particular animus toward the program or a desire to hurt poor families. Rather, the party just has other priorities: Republicans have committed to huge cuts to nondefense spending, even bigger cuts than those agreed to in their recent debt limit deal. Adhering to their self-imposed budget constraints, while safeguarding other programs they care more about (border security, etc.), requires slashing safety-net programs.
So, it’s not like the House GOP hates poor babies or postpartum moms. It’s just ... indifferent to them.
There’s a twist of irony in all this, though. If your priority is really fiscal rectitude, WIC is a terrible program to cut.
Available research suggests that every dollar spent on WIC saves much more than a dollar on other government spending programs. That’s because investing in maternal and early childhood nutrition is associated with fewer preterm births, higher birthweights and other improvements in mental and physical development.
Republicans portray their spending cuts as fiscally responsible. In reality, they’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Today? Republican lawmakers are literally trying to take food away from disadvantaged new moms and their children.
They’re doing so via the annual House appropriations agricultural bill, specifically the GOP-written House version that was slated for a vote this week. This legislation covers a lot of ground, including rural development grants and loans for farmers. But among its most critical, least appreciated, highest return-on-investment programs is one known as WIC (officially, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children).
WIC was created in the early 1970s to serve low-income pregnant women, new moms, babies and young children at nutritional risk. Unlike the better-known food stamp program — which allows beneficiaries to spend their assistance on almost any groceries they like — WIC targets the specific nutritional requirements of prenatal and postpartum mothers and their children up to age 5, based on legally required, regular scientific reviews of their dietary needs.
Catherine Rampell: Government incompetence is knocking eligible Americans off Medicaid
The program provides modest but evidence-based food benefits (for example, up to a dozen eggs per month per toddler). It also offers screening and referrals to other health and social services, such as breastfeeding counseling and substance-abuse programs. You know, basic stuff you’d expect a rich country to provide for low-income babies and struggling new moms.
ADVERTISING
Historically, we’ve risen to the occasion. There’s been strong bipartisan support for WIC for decades. Every year since 1997, Congress has committed to fully funding WIC — a fancy way of saying we’ve ensured there would be enough money to serve everyone eligible who applied.
Government officials have stuck to this commitment regardless of which party controlled the White House or either chamber of Congress, “even under Republican trifectas,” according to Brookings Institution scholar Robert Greenstein. In fact, even in years in which more funding turned out to be needed than was budgeted — because a recession increased the number of families eligible or food prices unexpectedly spiked — Congress and the Agriculture Department have made sure money was available to serve anyone eligible who applied, Greenstein said.
Now that commitment might be ending.
The GOP-controlled House’s fiscal 2024 agricultural bill would either eliminate or reduce benefits for 5.3 million kids and pregnant, postpartum and breastfeeding adults, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates.
Of that total, roughly 4.6 million participants would have their benefits cut, primarily because of rollbacks of a fruit and vegetable benefit that had been expanded in 2021 based on recommendations of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. Another 650,000 to 750,000 eligible people would likely be turned away from the program entirely because of funding shortfalls.
The House’s plan to turn away or waitlist these vulnerable families, for the first time in a quarter-century, would be an astonishing break in precedent. Especially so given the timing.
The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which was almost uniformly celebrated by Republican lawmakers (including the House agricultural bill’s sponsor, Maryland Rep. Andy Harris), caused thousands of women to have babies they weren’t prepared to support. We also recently saw nationwide infant-formula shortages. Republican lawmakers (including Harris) treated this crisis as political fodder, as desperate families scoured the country to feed their newborns.
And of course we’re now roughly two years into a run of elevated inflation. This has been another crisis Republicans have mined for political advantage — and pledged to remedy — while Americans struggled to put food on the table.
As is always true, voters should pay more attention to what politicians do than to what they say.
To be clear, GOP-proposed cuts to WIC don’t seem motivated by any particular animus toward the program or a desire to hurt poor families. Rather, the party just has other priorities: Republicans have committed to huge cuts to nondefense spending, even bigger cuts than those agreed to in their recent debt limit deal. Adhering to their self-imposed budget constraints, while safeguarding other programs they care more about (border security, etc.), requires slashing safety-net programs.
So, it’s not like the House GOP hates poor babies or postpartum moms. It’s just ... indifferent to them.
There’s a twist of irony in all this, though. If your priority is really fiscal rectitude, WIC is a terrible program to cut.
Available research suggests that every dollar spent on WIC saves much more than a dollar on other government spending programs. That’s because investing in maternal and early childhood nutrition is associated with fewer preterm births, higher birthweights and other improvements in mental and physical development.
Republicans portray their spending cuts as fiscally responsible. In reality, they’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
