A patchwork of funding is keeping a federal food aid program for low-income mothers and their young children open amid the partial government shutdown. But states could be forced to carry the program’s costs if Congress fails to reopen the federal government soon, experts have said.
About 150,000 pregnant women, mothers and their young children in Tennessee rely on the program to offset the cost of infant formula, fruits, vegetables and other nutrient-dense food items.
Unlike some other federally funded entitlement programs, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, or WIC, requires Congress to reauthorize its budget each year, making it vulnerable to a lapse in funding like the current shutdown.
On Sept. 30, the day before the shutdown began, the Department of Agriculture, which runs the program, issued a lapse in funding contingency plan that said the program could “recover and reallocate” funds leftover from the previous fiscal year to keep the program running. That included a $150 million contingency fund, but experts said that money would only last about two weeks.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it would fund the program using tariffs.
“While Democrats continue to vote to prolong the government shutdown, blocking funding for mothers and babies who rely on the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), USDA will utilize tariff revenue to fund WIC for the foreseeable future,” the spokesperson said in an email.
In response to the initial announcement Oct. 7 that the Trump administration would use tariffs to fund the program, Georgia Machell, president and CEO of the National WIC Association, raised questions about the plan and encouraged Congress to reach a deal to fund the program for a full year.
“We welcome efforts to keep WIC afloat during the shutdown, but families need long-term stability, not short-term uncertainty,” Machell said in a statement. “We still don’t know how much funding this measure provides, how quickly states will receive it, or how long it will sustain operations.”
Despite the uncertainty, Bill Christian, the Tennessee Department of Health’s spokesperson, said the state’s program was continuing with normal operations.
“Tennessee WIC continues to operate and WIC Clinics are open,” Christian said in an emailed statement. “Staff continue monitoring the federal situation and will notify participants and vendors in advance of any change to WIC operations in Tennessee.”
Christian did not offer more specifics about how the state was preparing for the possibility of a lapse in funding.
States can also use general funds to support federal programs during a shutdown. Historically, the federal government has reimbursed states for those expenses. However, some states, including Washington, have said they could sustain the program for only two weeks before services would be interrupted. Others, including Connecticut, said they are committed to keeping the program operating through the shutdown.
The Chattanooga Times Free Press reached out to U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Ooltewah, about the shutdown and funding for the program but did not hear back by Friday afternoon.
The shutdown is poised to stretch into its third week as both parties continue to vote down each other’s temporary funding measures. Democrats have so far held firm on their demand that any resolution also extend health care subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the calendar year.
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AN UNDERUSED PROGRAM
Alaina Fortune, 20, who lives in Hamilton County, is the mother of a 1-year-old and is studying to be an ultrasound technician. She relies on food program vouchers to buy milk, fruits, vegetables and some other nutritious food items as her son transitions to eating solid food.
The young mother said the program provides a road map to healthier options and allows her to keep more of the income she earns as a hostess at a restaurant downtown.
“With WIC, my decisions and what I get is definitely smarter,” Fortune said by phone. “Without it I would kind of be like running around the grocery store like a chicken with my head cut off.”
In addition to food vouchers, the program, which began in the 1970s, also provides health screenings, educational resources and lactation services to eligible pregnant and postpartum women. Families who are at or below 185% of the U.S. poverty level are eligible for the program. A family of three qualifies if their income is less than $4,110 per month.
Despite a steady increase in enrollment in recent years, less than half of all eligible Tennesseans are enrolled in the program, data from the Agriculture Department shows.
Signe Anderson, the senior director of nutrition advocacy at the Tennessee Justice Center, a health care and anti-hunger advocacy group, said that’s most likely the result of working families struggling to find time to go to appointments, lacking knowledge about the program, language barriers and difficulty redeeming benefits.
In a phone call, Anderson echoed the state Health Department’s emphasis that the program is operating normally. But she added that the longer the shutdown lasts, the more uncertain things could become.
“If this continues into next week, or the end of the month, I think we’re concerned about what it looks like for November,” Anderson said.
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Contact Report for America corps member Jules Feeney at jfeeney@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6431.
Note: This story was updated Oct. 13 to correct the number of residents who use the program.