WIC is Running Out of Money, Fast

If the shutdown goes on, the WIC Program could run out of money in two weeks. 

In case you don’t know, WIC, or the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, is a program that provides healthy food to pregnant women and to breastfeeding moms and children under five. WIC benefits can be used in addition to the SNAP program (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, usually called “food stamps”) and also if you make a little too much money for food stamps: the income limit for food stamps is about 130% of the federal poverty level depending on the state you live in, and the income limit for WIC is 185%. A mother has to sign herself up for WIC benefits separately from SNAP when she’s pregnant or after she has a baby. Depending on her state, there are certain hoops, like watching a series of educational videos about nutrition, that have to be jumped through before she gets her WIC card. And then her card is loaded every month with vouchers for healthy food. When her baby is born, she can continue getting healthy food and also get formula.

I’ve written before about how SNAP works and the low rate of fraud and abuse. WIC is a far more parsimonious government program that’s even harder to abuse.

SNAP benefits are, essentially, a certain amount of money loaded monthly on a debit card that can only be spent on food at the grocery store, with a lot of leeway about what foods you can buy. WIC, on the other hand, can only be spent on a narrow list of items, and those items can vary from state to state. Depending on where you live, you could use WIC to buy brown rice, fresh vegetables, cans of salmon, sacks of beans and low fat milk. But you might not be able to spend it on whole milk, almond milk or chocolate milk, or at the butcher counter for fresh salmon. Some states let you spend WIC at the farmer’s market and some only let you spend it at the supermarket.  it’s notoriously irritating to shop with WIC benefits, because in addition to certain TYPES of food, often WIC will only cover certain BRANDS and SIZES of food. You might be able to buy three one-pound bags of generic brand rice, for example,  but you can’t buy a three-pound bag of the exact same generic rice and you can’t buy a box of Uncle Ben’s. That sort of thing.

No government program has zero waste or abuse. That’s not something we can reasonably expect. But in general, since WIC only covers such a specific list of things, the rate of fraud is very low. There’s only so much trouble you can get into with cans of baby formula and a gallon of 2% milk. WIC costs taxpayers $8 billion a year, which sounds like a lot until you compare it to the $874 billion your taxes and mine spent on the military in 2024. And for that slim budget, it’s been demonstrated to be extremely beneficial: WIC benefits are associated with better birth rates, lower rates of nutrition deficiencies, and better performance at school for young children.

Unfortunately, with the government shutdown at the beginning of the fiscal year, WIC doesn’t have its funding.

They’re not getting their money for the year, and they’re on an $150 million emergency fund that will last for a couple more weeks. That’s all they have. If the shutdown lasts longer than a few weeks, nobody’s going to get more WIC vouchers until it’s over.

About six million people, all moms and tiny little kids, rely on that money. Not for shopping they can put off for a bit like a pair of new sneakers. Not for essential things they only need once or twice a year, like a flu shot or a dental appointment. But for food to eat so they don’t get sick or worse. Pregnant women, breastfeeding moms and preschool-aged children are going to suddenly find themselves with that much less in the grocery budget than usual. Sure, quite a few of those families also have SNAP benefits, which are safe for the whole month of October. But after that, things will get rocky with SNAP as well. And this is coming at a time when the pickings at food pantries are getting slimmer and slimmer, and the grocery prices are getting higher and higher. You do the math. The situation could turn into an emergency very quickly.

I’m not going to be a Pollyanna and say there’s an easy way out of this mess.

I do think that everyone who is able should be flooding food pantries with donations of cash and canned goods. I think that, wherever this is practical, you should be checking on your poorer neighbors and asking if they need some formula of if the shutdown lasts. Maybe there’s a church outreach or a pregnancy center that works with poor families near you, and you can help work with them. But that’s not going to solve the problem for every single person who needs WIC. A country the size of the United States, needs a bureaucracy the size of our bureaucracy. The only way we can save all those people is with a functioning government. And just now, we don’t have one. I couldn’t guess when, if ever, we’ll get a functioning government back.

But I do believe that awareness is part of the way we could return to sanity, so I’m making you aware: WIC is running out of money, fast. Many little children will begin to starve if that happens.