By Julianne Malveaux

Guest Columnist

They are calling it a budget cut. But let’s be clear: when Congress cuts funding for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, known simply as WIC, it is taking food from pregnant women, babies, toddlers and young children.

WIC is not cash welfare. It is not a giveaway. It is one of the most efficient and humane nutrition programs this country has ever created. It provides targeted food support, breastfeeding support, nutrition counseling and health referrals to pregnant and postpartum women, infants, and children up to age 5. It helps families buy milk, eggs, cereal, formula, fruits, vegetables, and other basics that make the difference between nourishment and hunger.

Now the House of Representatives has decided that these families should do with less.

On June 4, the House passed the fiscal year 2027 agriculture appropriations bill, including a $200 million cut to WIC and a reduction in the fruit-and-vegetable benefit. For a family already stretching every dollar, that is not an abstraction. That is fewer apples. Fewer greens. Less formula. Less food at the very moment when food matters most.

The numbers are stark. The House bill cuts WIC by $200 million and reduces the fruit-and-vegetable benefit. The White House proposal goes even further, slashing the monthly produce benefit for young children from $26 to about $10. That is a $16 cut per child each month — more than 60% — in the very part of WIC designed to put fresh food on the table.

Some will say that $16 a month is not much. But $16 is only “not much” to people who have never been down to their last $16. For a family living on the edge, $16 is milk and bananas, eggs and apples, bus fare to the grocery store, or the difference between buying fresh food and buying the cheapest calories available.

A cut does not have to be large to be cruel. Sometimes the last $16 is the last straw. This is what cruelty looks like when it wears a green eyeshade.

We are told, endlessly, that this nation cares about children. Politicians pose with babies, praise mothers, salute families, and campaign on “values.” But values are not measured by slogans. They are measured by budgets. And a budget that takes food from women and children tells us exactly whose lives are expendable.

WIC also supports farmers, grocers, and local food economies. When a mother uses WIC dollars to buy fresh fruit, vegetables, milk, eggs, cereal, or formula, that money does not disappear. It goes to grocery stores, farmers markets, dairy producers, food distributors, and growers who depend on regular customers.

Less WIC money means fewer purchases of healthy food. It means fewer dollars circulating in local communities. It means that a cut aimed at poor women and children also reaches farmers and small businesses. Nutrition dollars are economic dollars, too.

The House has acted, but the Senate has not finished its work. Final negotiations are still ahead. That means advocacy matters now. Not next month. Not after recess. Now.

The ask is simple: fully fund WIC. Reject cuts to the fruit-and-vegetable benefit. Preserve the virtual and remote services that make WIC accessible to working mothers, rural families, and those without easy transportation. Do not balance the budget on babies.

The United States can find money for tax breaks, weapons, walls, corporate subsidies and billionaire giveaways. Surely it can find money for bananas, carrots, milk, cereal, formula and breastfeeding support.

The families who rely on WIC are not asking for luxury. They are asking for food. They are asking for nourishment. They are asking for a basic public commitment that babies should not go hungry, that pregnant women should not be undernourished, and that children should have access to the building blocks of health.

That should not be controversial. It should be the floor beneath our politics.

When children are hungry, delay is a decision. When pregnant women are undernourished, silence is complicity. And when Congress chooses austerity for babies while protecting abundance for the powerful, we should name it for what it is.

This is not fiscal discipline. It is moral failure.

Julianne Malveaux is a Washington D.C.-based economist and author. Her column is provided by the Trice Edney News Wire.