Skip to main content
Elyssa Schmier's picture

The time has come for us to ring all the alarm bells to protect the highly successful WIC program that provides nutritional assistance to 7 million pregnant and postpartum women, infants, and young children! Unless immediate action by Congress is taken in November when it extends the current temporary government funding law, WIC will experience a funding shortfall early next year which will lead to many women and children being waitlisted for the program and/or their benefits being cut. So far both the House and Senate have failed to provide enough funding for WIC to protect eligible women and children who apply for WIC. We can't let this happen!!

***Join our WIC Emergency Day of Action TODAY and take these 3 actions to protect the health and nutrition of pregnant women, new moms, babies, and toddlers.

Today we are joining hundreds of other organizations and advocates around the country to ring the alarms and demand that Congress take immediate action to protect and fund WIC. Please join us and take these actions today:

    1. CALL your U.S. Senators to tell them "Take action to avoid a WIC emergency! Include a down payment in WIC funds in the next Continuing Resolution in November and fully fund the program to allow more eligible women/children to participate." You can use MomsRising's call-in line–all you have to do is put in your information and your phone will ring, connecting you directly to your Senators’ offices. (We even provide you with talking points!)

       

    2. SIGN our letter to Congress calling on them to protect and fund WIC!
    3. POST to social media (Instagram, Twitter/X, Facebook, and TikTok) using our social media toolkit so you can encourage all your friends and family to take action and speak out about WIC as well. (You can also tag @momsrising in your posts!)

Taking these 3 important actions will help us defend WIC and the millions of pregnant women, moms, and children that access the program. Thank you!

Here's what's going on: Due to increased demand for WIC’s critical nutrition and health services coupled with higher food prices, WIC will be forced to start creating waitlists or cutting benefits without additional funding.

The existing Continuing Resolution (CR), which keeps the federal government funded, expires on November 17th. We need to ensure that this legislation has critical additional funding for WIC. Additionally, for FY24 we need a bipartisan Congress to fully fund WIC to prevent a funding shortfall for the rest of the year.

WIC has experienced a 18.3% increase in child participation since 2020 and the program is expected to serve as many as 7 million pregnant and postpartum women, infants, and young children in fiscal year 2024. With rising food costs, and increased program participation it is more critical than ever that we strengthen WIC to provide pregnant people, new moms, and toddlers with the nutrition assistance, formula, and breastfeeding counseling they so desperately need.


The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of MomsRising.org.

MomsRising.org strongly encourages our readers to post comments in response to blog posts. We value diversity of opinions and perspectives. Our goals for this space are to be educational, thought-provoking, and respectful. So we actively moderate comments and we reserve the right to edit or remove comments that undermine these goals. Thanks!