[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 38 (Wednesday, March 1, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H2398]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            SUPPORT FOR WIC

  (Mr. DURBIN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. Speaker, I wish some of my Republican friends would 
just spend a few minutes visiting a WIC clinic, just a few minutes, to 
see the real faces of women and their children who come to those 
clinics each day and with the help of a system that is very successful 
raise healthy children who really are tomorrow's future.
  For the Republicans it is just statistics. It is just welfare. But 
for the rest of America, it is the real life that we lead.
  There was an amendment before the committee which suggested we should 
continue to have competition and bidding for infant formula under that 
program. The competition and bidding that Democrats push save American 
taxpayers over $1 billion a year. And yet the Republicans, on a 
partisan vote, rejected that. The Wall Street Journal reported 
yesterday why, because the four largest infant formula companies in 
this country stand to gain $1 billion more in profits because the 
Republicans walked away from this cost efficiency which Democrats have 
pushed.
  Forty percent of the infants in America today are in the WIC Program. 
We cannot have a strong America if we do not have strong children. Let 
us stick with the programs that work.


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