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As House Appropriators work on the government funding bill for Fiscal Year 2024, Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) is pushing back against Republican threats to essential food benefits like the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). In today’s full committee markup of the fiscal year 2024 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies bill, Pingree railed against the proposed cuts to WIC’s fruits and vegetable benefits, warning her Republican colleagues that these cuts would worsen America’s costly obesity epidemic. 

“Just so you know, if this is a benefit for a 1-to 4-year-old child, they were getting $25 a month. We decided to cut it down to $11 because, of course, that should be enough. A pregnant woman is going to go from $44 a month to $13,” said Pingree. “I was in my local grocery store last weekend—an apple costs a buck 50; a bag of carrots, $1.99; strawberries, $3.99; blueberries, $2.99; asparagus, $3.99. That bag costs you $14.50. So, if you were getting a benefit of $13 as a pregnant woman, you've already had to put something back. So, we are saying that somehow, for some sense of fiscal responsibility, we're going to take fresh food away from a mother and child?”

“We already know that these are the most critical moments of a child's life, of a pregnant woman’s. And to deny that benefit? A 2019 [National Institutes of Health (NIH)] study found that unhealthy diets cost us $50 billion a year in expenditures on these very diseases. So somehow, we can't put that money first and make sure we give a child a good start?” Pingree said. “This is the level of ridiculousness we have gotten to in this bill. For that mother who's walking down the aisles who no longer is going to have $44 in her pocket, she's going to have $13. That bag of chips at one dollar is looking pretty good.”

Click here to watch Pingree’s full remarks. 

Republicans’ Appropriations Agriculture Subcommittee bill would reduce the monthly WIC fruit and vegetable benefit:

• From $25 to $11 for children (a 56 percent reduction),
• From $44 to $13 for pregnant and postpartum participants (a 70 percent reduction)
• From $49 to $15 for breastfeeding participants (a 69 percent reduction)

Under Republicans’ proposal, the 3,000 pregnant and post-partum women and 10,000 children participating in WIC in Maine would be left with only $11 to $15 per month for fruits and vegetables.

Earlier this month, Pingree defended essential programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) under threat from House Republicans in the Agriculture Committee’s hearing on nutrition, the fourth Title of the Farm Bill.

Pingree, a longtime farmer and member of both the House Agriculture Committee and the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, was recently appointed by House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries to the newly established Task Force on Agriculture and Nutrition. 

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