You’ve already read about the amazing callousness shown towards the American people by Republicans Paul Ryan and unpopular President Donald Trump in their health care plans and their budget plans. One of the other ideas is to cut around $200 million from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). And when you cut that much money from something, that means less people are going to be served—and those people are in the title of the program.
While Trump’s proposed cut, of $200m, represents just a 4% reduction in the program’s budget, a cut of that size would nevertheless force WIC to turn away hundreds of thousands of eligible mothers and children, progressive thinktanks have argued. More than 7.8 million women and children participated in WIC in the first three months of the 2016 fiscal year. Children and infants usually make up three-quarters of WIC recipients.
Trump’s budget would mean that hundreds of thousands of mothers and their children and their infants would be unable to receive the food vouchers they qualify for. The reason they “qualify” for them is because they do not have enough income to afford enough food to feed those young children and infants.
Research suggests that WIC may have had a hand in eradicating some food deserts – neighborhoods with little or no access to fresh or healthy foods – and causing the rate of early childhood obesity to go into freefall. Beginning in 2009, the program, which dates to the 1970s, began providing vouchers for fresh produce and permitted the purchase of whole grains and baby food.
There is also evidence to suggest that WIC has helped cut down on the cases of childhood obesity, which in turn means healthier children.
A new study shows that 34 of 56 WIC State Agencies are seeing modest decreases in obesity among young children from 2010-2014. The percentage of low-income children (ages 2-4) with obesity enrolled in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) decreased from 15.9% in 2010 to 14.5% in 2014.
So in order to give the rich a tax break, build a fucking useless wall and pay for more gestapo-deportation agents, we will starve little children and their mothers.