Pregnant Women or Children First? — States Are Faced with Grim Choices

The Women, Infants and Children supplemental nutrition program (WIC) is one of many federally funded services that will take a big hit because of sequestration. A new paper issued today by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) examines the effects and the extremely difficult choices that will fall onto state officials administering WIC.

CBPP estimates that between 575,000 and 750,000 eligible low-income women and children will be turned away by the end of the current federal fiscal year (September 30), if sequestration remains in place. That number will depend on how quickly and broadly states beginning denying benefits to low-income pregnant women and children.

If states indiscriminately deny as many applicants and re-applicants as possible, they can reduce the total number who are affected. However, if they set priorities and retain eligibility for high risk women and infants, which I think is probably the wiser course of action, then the cutting will go more slowly, and a larger number of people will have to be turned away by the end of the fiscal year to achieve the mandated spending reduction.

Read more in the new CBPP paper.

Jon Peacock