[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 39 (Thursday, March 2, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H2572]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       THE WIC PROGRAM IS WORKING

  The SPEAKER. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from 
Texas [Mr. Stenholm] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I have spent all of my life in the food 
processing end of the business. I have spent the last 16 years of my 
life learning more about the consuming side our food industry. In the 
last few days I have spent a lot of time talking to the school lunch 
room administrators, school superintendents back home in my district, 
and they confirmed a belief that I already had, that our school lunch 
and breakfast programs are not broken, and I am puzzled why some seek 
to fix them.
  But tonight I want to spend a few minutes talking about a program 
that I have become very supportive of, and that is the WIC Program. 
When I first heard of it, Mr. Speaker, I was supportive because it did 
one thing that was sort of important. It fed children. But 4 years ago 
in the House Committee on the Budget I had an experience of sitting and 
listening to four CEOs of four of the larger corporations of America 
who had come before the Committee on the Budget for one purpose that 
day, and that was to convince us in the
 Congress to fully fund the WIC Program, not just 40 percent or, at 
that time, 30 percent, but to fully fund it, and I listened with quite 
a bit of attention and some considerable interest. I listened to those 
CEOs first say that they hire tens of thousands of young men and women 
every year to work for them in their respective businesses, and they 
had to retain 70 percent of all of those who came to them, and they 
said, and I paraphrase what they basically told us that morning, but it 
was that at first we looked at our school system, we looked at our 
kindergartens, our grade schools, our middle schools, our high schools, 
our colleges, where we were fumbling the ball, but the more we looked, 
the more we came to the conclusion that we were really fumbling the 
ball by not giving every child born in America a healthy start. They 
came to us that morning and suggested that, if we had to cut anywhere, 
even in feeding programs, to cut anywhere other than the WIC program 
because unless a child has a healthy start from the womb through the 
first 3 or 4 years of its life, that child will be a health problem the 
rest of its life. With all odds it will be an educational problem. 
Eventually it will become a crime problem, and we only have to remember 
the discussions we have had in this body not too long ago about how 
much we are spending on crime.

  Mr. Speaker, those were the words of four CEOs, and those words 
should be listened to with a great deal of interest as we debate the 
priority settings that are going to be necessary.
  As my colleagues know, I, too, lament the fact that we failed to pass 
the balanced budget constitutional amendment today. But even if we were 
spending only that amount of money that we have today provided for us, 
not borrowing $200 billion, I would still be here tonight saying of the 
1,300,000,000 we will spend that we have that the WIC program is one 
that we should, in fact, be prioritizing, certainly not cutting. We 
perhaps ought to be looking for ways in which we could increase that 
program because it is one of the better investments we could make.
  We have already heard that every dollar we spend on WIC provides from 
$1.92 to $4.21 in Medicaid savings. Those are demonstrated factual 
savings that have been confirmed and reconfirmed by so many who also 
believe in this program.
  So I commend the gentlewoman from North Carolina [Mrs. Clayton] for 
getting us together tonight and talking about the need of taking 
another look, and I would encourage my colleagues on the other side of 
the aisle to take another look at the feeding program reductions, 
particularly though to take a look at the idea or the suggestion that 
WIC should be cut. I believe that, if my colleagues will look at the 
facts and not listen to only the whims of the current desires, that 
they will find, as I have done, and those four CEOs came to the 
conclusion 4 years ago, the WIC program is a good program, it is 
working, it needs to be increased in funding if we possibly can find 
it, but it certainly does not need to be cut.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston].
  Mr. KINGSTON. As the gentleman has spent a considerable amount of 
time trying to balance the budget, he knows that the WIC program in the 
rescission bill is cut 2 percent, and the money that was cut is money 
that the WIC program is not using.
  Mr. STENHOLM. Well, I do not know that to be a fact. In fact, 
regardless of the numbers that we might talk about, et cetera, we are 
still only going to be providing for what percent of the children?
  Mr. KINGSTON. Well, 2 percent of the money that is being cut from WIC 
represents money that the WIC program was not using.
  Mr. STENHOLM. But we are only feeding 40 percent of the possible 
children, so it would seem to me rather than making that cut we ought 
to be looking for ways to make the program work better and reach out to 
the other 60 percent of the children that we are not feeding.




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