Republicans want to cut food assistance for 5 million low-income babies and parents

• The GOP's agriculture appropriations bill would mean major benefit cuts for WIC recipients.
• Low-income parents and babies are eligible to receive the benefit, which subsidizes food and care.

As the GOP eyes spending priorities, one program that provides access to nutritious food and health screenings for low-income parents and babies might see major cuts.

Under the House GOP agriculture appropriations bill, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children — known as WIC — would not be funded to the extent the program needs, according to the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, potentially leading to hundreds of thousands of kids and postpartum parents getting turned away or cutting their food budgets.

In total, according to CBPP's analysis, the $6 billion the GOP bill allocates to WIC would lead to 5.3 million children and pregnant, postpartum, or breastfeeding parents seeing their food assistance cut, or completely gone. Among them would be 650,000 to 750,000 babies and parents turned away from services completely. Per the USDA, 6,260,000 people participated in WIC in fiscal year 2022; as of April 2023, there were over 6.6 million Americans participating, including nearly 1.5 million infants and 3.6 million children. To qualify for WIC, a family of two would have to make $36,482 or less annually.

WIC is meant to, in part, help subsidize purchases of nutritious foods. Per the program's website, participants are able to use their benefits on groceries like baby food, eggs, and fruit and vegetables; participants are also able to use WIC benefits at some farmers' markets.

But the proposed GOP funding levels for WIC would particularly slash access to fruit and vegetables, according to CBPP. If that bill is enacted, those participating in the program would get just $11 to $15 monthly to spend on fruits and vegetables — a cut of over 50%. That all comes as food prices stay high, and in the wake of a baby formula shortage that left parents vulnerable to huge markups and price gouging.

"The Administration is deeply concerned that the funding level provided in the bill for WIC would put the program at significant risk of being unable to serve all eligible women and children who seek assistance, which could result in waiting lists, greater hardship, and poorer health outcomes for this vulnerable population," the White House's Office of Budget Management said in a statement on the appropriations bill. OMB said that were the president to receive the bill on his desk, he would veto it.

As the Washington Post's Catherine Rampell notes, WIC is a rare bipartisan program that both sides of the aisle have historically agreed to fund. The OMB said in its statement that it "urges the Congress to continue the long
bipartisan agreement to provide enough funds for WIC to serve all eligible participants without harmful benefit cuts."

The proposed cuts to WIC come after an already-precarious time for low-income Americans receiving food subsidies. Earlier this year, a pandemic-era SNAP expansion abruptly wound down, with millions of lower-income, elderly, and disabled Americans suddenly seeing their SNAP allocations fall by $258 monthly.

"The truth of the matter is, and I hate to say this, but the poorer you are, the poorer you eat," Tonyia Canales, a disabled grandmother raising her grandson on her fixed income in Texas, previously told Insider about her SNAP benefits falling to just $36 a month.

"It was so nice to be able to go to the store and actually buy groceries," Canales said. "But now that that's over, we're going to have to go right back to where we were, which is struggling, and now it's going to be worse because the prices have all gone sky high."

Are you a parent receiving WIC and considered about cuts? Contact this reporter at jkaplan@insider.com.