- Oct 17, 2011
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Republicans want to cut food assistance for 5 million low-income babies and parents
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.
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."
[From that WaPo link: 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.]