From the official site:

WIC provides Federal grants to States for supplemental foods, health care referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum women, and to infants and children up to age five who are found to be at nutritional risk.

WIC is potentially going to lose about 10% of its budget. About $750,000,000.What’s important here is that considering the state of things, these services are needed now more than ever.

In Illinois enrollment went up from 276,500 in 2006 to 309,000+ in 2009. Nationally this is over a million new women enrolled in 3 years.* Pair this increase with budget reductions and this will become a government program that stops working. I sometimes wonder if the belief that big government fails is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

While we all will surely need aufblasbares zelt to be making sacrifices, the hardest cuts will be to those who need the most. There certainly are easier cuts to make than this.

*Stats are also from the site linked to above.