House Republicans’ Agriculture Appropriations Bill Would Cut WIC Benefits for 5 Million Participants, Put SNAP Benefits at Risk for 1 Million Older Adults

(See Appendix Tables 1 and 2 for state- by-state estimates of the impacts of these proposals.) The appropriations bill shortchanges WIC by $800 million relative to the amount needed to provide current benefits to all eligible applicants, a reduction of more than 12 percent. [...] To cut funding without putting eligible applicants on waiting lists, the bill guts the increase to benefits for fruit and vegetables that has been in place since 2021 and was implemented based on a recommendation by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. [...] One of the strengths of the child nutrition and WIC programs is that the foods they offer are selected through a transparent, deliberate, and science-based process with opportunities for the public and members of Congress to weigh in. [...] The WIC cut would directly undermine the science-based increase in the fruit and vegetable benefit that the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine recommended to provide approximately half of the recommended daily amounts of fruits and vegetables for adults and children.5 The increase, originally enacted in the American Rescue Plan, was extended through the annual appropriations. [...] Average monthly participation in the first five months of fiscal year 2023 was 3.7 percent higher than in the first five months of fiscal year 2022, and has already exceeded the level the Department of Agriculture (USDA) projected for the entire fiscal year.