April Perez was 22 years old when she had her first daughter. Enrolling in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, commonly known as WIC, was a lifesaver. “With her being my first child,” she said, “I was still finding my way through motherhood.” The program helped her access healthy foods for her family, get formula when she wasn’t able to produce enough breastmilk to breastfeed her daughter, and even get a referral to sign up her daughter, now 4 years old, for health insurance.

WIC provides food, nutrition education, breastfeeding support, and health care referrals to low-income mothers and young children ages 5 and under. Perez said the benefits for formula and foods like milk, fruit and vegetables alleviated some of the financial pressure around her transition to motherhood. “I didn’t have to stress about whether I was going to feed her or not,” she said. The benefits also made it possible for Perez and her husband to save up for their own apartment and move out of the friend’s house they were staying in. 

Perez’s husband works long days in construction, but she doesn’t work due to a number of health issues. She has cerebral palsy, which makes it hard for her to stand, use her arms and hands, or sometimes even walk, and hydrocephalus. WIC benefits help keep her family afloat. Perez, who lives in Virginia, now has two more daughters, a 3-year-old and a 3-month-old, and all three of her children are enrolled in WIC. Her 3-year-old, who has been diagnosed with autism, is very particular about food given her sensory sensitivities, but Perez is able to get her plenty of milk, bananas and other foods she likes with her WIC benefits. “It gives me peace of mind for my kid,” she said. Her infant, meanwhile, needs a special formula because she has acid reflux, which she said would cost her $50 if she didn’t get it through WIC.

But the government shutdown has now put the WIC program at risk. Unlike Social Security, WIC isn’t an entitlement program, so it relies on Congress to appropriate money every year, but Congress wasn’t able to pass bills funding the government before the fiscal year lapsed on September 30. The program is on funds, operating mostly on a contingency fund of , which is , as the shutdown continues. 

Federal funds would likely have lasted just two weeks from the start of the shutdown, estimated ZoĂ« Neuberger, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Then on Oct. 7, the Trump administration it had found a “creative solution” to use tariff revenue to keep federal WIC funding flowing. In a briefing for Congressional staffers three days later, the administration said it would about $300 million in unused tariff revenue into WIC, allowing it to continue until the end of October.

After federal funding is gone, states will have to use their own money if they want to keep the program going and try to get the federal government to pay them back when it reopens. The administration recently sent states an email saying that if they use their own funds for WIC allowable purposes they may be reimbursed, according to Neuberger and the National WIC Association. But “there isn’t a guarantee” of reimbursement, Neuberger noted, and “it would be helpful to have assurances.” 

States have used their funds to keep WIC going in past shutdowns, and some plan to do so now. Colorado lawmakers a bill to fund the program for a month in the event of a shutdown, and the governors of and Montana have that they’ll keep their programs running for the near term. But not every state currently has that capacity.

While Mississippi not to disrupt benefits for current recipients, the state has suspended enrolling new ones. The Inter-Tribal Council of Nevada WIC, which serves Nevada’s Native tribes and is open to all of the state’s residents, announced that it would benefits starting on Oct. 9, but then unspent federal recovery funds that allowed it to stay open through the end of October. Similarly, Washington state officials they don’t have the money to keep WIC open, but also federal funding on Oct. 9 that allows the state program to keep operating through the end of the month. If the shutdown drags on longer than that, states in similar situations will either have to stop enrolling new families to stretch their funds or risk having to cut off benefits entirely.

Losing benefits would be devastating for parents like Ashely Gooden-Stewart, a mother of three from Texas. She first enrolled in WIC in 2014, when her first baby, who died as an infant, was born. She enrolled when each of her other children were born and is currently receiving benefits for her 1-year-old. Gooden-Stewart works remotely on a contract basis, but the work is seasonal and spotty. She said she doesn’t have any current projects and doesn’t expect to before the end of the month, but in order to get a full-time job she needs child care, which she cannot afford. 

WIC helps fill in the gaps. “Eggs is expensive, milk is expensive, life is expensive,” Gooden-Stewart said. Her family relies on getting those staples through the program. If these benefits dry up, “We would have to go with less,” she said. 

The educational aspects of WIC are also very valuable to her. She said the breastfeeding classes are “incredible” and the classes on child development milestones, which she currently attends, have been very useful. “Although I’ve been a mother for years, it’s different each time,” she said. She loves the cooking classes that are offered, which help her discover more ways to incorporate vegetables into her family’s meals. “It helps our family eat healthier,” she said, adding that losing access to these classes would be “detrimental.” 

The uncertainty of the shutdown itself may be disrupting benefits for some people by making them hesitate to enroll. “Just the news about a shutdown or WIC possibly being affected leads people to not get benefits that they need,” Neuberger noted. And even after the government eventually reopens, WIC’s future remains uncertain. The program still has to be funded for the next year, and it’s unclear if it will get enough money to keep operating as it has been. In his , President Trump called for a significant cut to WIC’s fruit and vegetable benefits, which would between 62% to 75% for 5.2 million participants, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities (CBPP). 

Although the Republican-led House proposed a smaller cut to the fruit and vegetable benefits in its latest appropriations bill, the proposal still calls for a reduction and doesn’t include enough funding to keep serving everyone that is likely to enroll over the next year. Under the proposal, recipients would see a reduction in their food benefits and states would have to turn away nearly a half million eligible families, according to a . The Senate Agriculture Appropriations , by contrast, fully funds WIC. Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, have a bill that would make WIC a mandatory program, sparing it from running out of money during a government shutdown or if enrollment surges more than expected.

There is also that if an agreement to reopen the government doesn’t include guardrails that ensure that the Trump administration actually spends the money Congress appropriates as is the law, WIC could be cut through measures the administration to withhold funding for other programs, such as impoundment and rescission. With higher enrollment from eligible families and rising food costs, WIC is in need of more funding than in past years to continue serving all eligible participants who enroll.

If WIC benefits are disrupted, Perez’s family will feel the impact immediately. “It scares me,” Perez said. Her family receives food stamps, but with food prices so high, “it only lasts me for one week,” she said. Perez knows she can’t work, and she doesn’t have child care, but she said that if WIC funding runs short in the shutdown, she might be forced to find some kind of job to make ends meet. The only alternative would be for her husband, who already works from 6 a.m. into the evening, to get a second job during night hours. She worries about how that would impact her children, especially her daughter with autism who doesn’t do well with change.

They might even have to move. Perez fears that if their WIC benefits are interrupted, her family may not be able to afford their monthly rent of $1,650 on top of utilities, internet and car payments. 

Growing up, Perez said she watched her parents go without food so she and her siblings could eat. WIC benefits have meant she hasn’t yet had to do the same. But that will change if WIC’s food benefits disappear. “The thought of that happening — and me having to do that for my kids — that hurts,” she said. “The thought of having to worry about that is scary. I don’t want to have to worry about if I’m going to be able to feed my kids or not.”

“[If] I wasn’t able to take care of my kids like I want to,” Perez said, “that would really make me disappointed in this country.”

Going part time “cut my salary in half, so I needed help being able to afford some of the basics for my family,” she said. Even with her husband’s part-time work, the loss of income would have meant frequenting food pantries, and coping with whatever would be on offer there, if it weren’t for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, known as WIC. More than likely, without WIC she would have had to quit her job, give up her career and uproot her family to move closer to where she could get family support to help with child care. “I don’t think I could have made all the pieces fit in terms of time, support and finances,” she said.

Enrolling in WIC, though, has provided the help that she needed. “It just makes our life have a lot more convenience and dignity being able to shop for what I know my toddler will eat,” she said. “It’s been so great for our family.”

WIC’s supports have gone beyond financial help with buying food; Page said she’s shopping both more affordably and nutritiously for her family, adding more whole grains and protein to their diets. The program offers parenting services as well, and when she came home from the hospital after her baby was born and was having trouble breastfeeding, the program covered a lactation counselor who was able to sort out the issue, allowing Page to keep breastfeeding. She was connected with a curriculum that offers other parents’ experiences and ways to cope with stress and anger, as well as with a fellow mom who has coached her through breastfeeding. She got a starter kit of breastfeeding supplies like a hand pump and milk storage bags. “The support just felt amazing, it felt validating,” she said. With her first child, “I wish that I had this kind of coaching as a new parent, that would have been really helpful.”

“WIC met me in my special circumstance and was accessible for this particular need I had of being able to nourish two very small kids while not being able to work full time,” she said. She noted that she and her husband don’t have family nearby to help and support them; they moved to Utah so she could serve at her particular church. “Receiving food from WIC was the first time I’ve ever felt like, ‘Wow, my society sees what it takes to raise the next generation and actually values and supports this incredible investment that my little family is making into raising some good humans.’”

WIC’s financial, nutritional and moral support is now at risk of being pared back for the first time in a quarter decade. Although WIC is not an entitlement program—meaning that unlike Medicare or Social Security, it does not by definition serve everyone who is eligible—there has been a bipartisan commitment for more than 25 years to fund the program with enough money that it has been able to enroll everyone who applies. “WIC is unique,” noted ZoĂ« Neuberger, a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Congress has ensured “enough money so that nobody actually gets turned away for lack of funds.” But, thanks to the combined forces of more people enrolling than had been anticipated and much higher food costs, the program is unless Congress gives it more money.

If Congress doesn’t pass legislation early next year that includes enough funding for WIC by the summer, states will have to start putting people on waiting lists instead of accepting them immediately. Thanks to the program’s priority system, the first people who would be put on those lists would be postpartum people who aren’t breastfeeding and older children, as the program can serve kids up until they reach age five. Unlike other programs that serve people throughout their lives, the benefits of WIC can only be realized in a short window, so someone who languishes on a waiting list is likely to miss out entirely. States will also have to some people when they have to renew their benefits.

These changes will likely ripple out even to people who wouldn’t be put on a waiting list. “Once word gets out that not everyone who’s eligible is able to apply, then people just won’t show up,” Neuberger. Even as states prioritize breastfeeding parents and babies, those people may assume they can’t get on if they hear that there’s a wait. “It’s very hard to contain the effects.” Even if Congress passed enough funding to serve everyone the following year, any rebound in enrollment would likely be slow, she said.

In November, Congress passed and President Biden signed a continuing resolution that kept government funding steady until January 15. It didn’t include the extra money WIC needs, although it did include something important: the ability for the program to keep spending at whatever rate is needed to maintain its current operations and not turn anyone away or take away benefits.

But come January 15, lawmakers will once again debate how much to fund each federal government department and program. At that point it will need to come up with more money to stave off cuts. To keep serving all eligible families who enroll, WIC needs “a substantial increase from last year,” Neuberger said, estimating that it would take about $1 billion more.

And yet neither of the bills currently under consideration by either the House or Senate include nearly enough money to make sure WIC can keep enrolling and serving every eligible person. Instead, Neuberger and Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst at the CBPP, estimate that under the Senate bill WIC would have to new parents and young children and, on top of that, under House Republicans’ steep spending reductions 4.7 million would have their benefits cut.

The need for extra funding is being fueled by two different factors colliding. WIC has never enrolled everyone who qualifies—there is a “very large group of low-income families that are eligible for WIC that have not enrolled in recent years,” Neuberger said, and in fact participation for a while. That trend has recently reversed, and participation over the second half of last year and all of this year. “That’s a very important, positive turnaround,” Neuberger said. It’s likely being driven by a coordinated effort to get more people to use the program combined with increased need among people who qualify—both thanks to higher food costs and expiring pandemic benefits like the expanded Child Tax Credit, universal free school meals and larger food stamp allotments. But it also means that the program needs more money to keep up in order to not have to turn anyone away.

At the same time, inflation and consistently higher price levels for food mean that each enrollee’s benefits now cost the program more. Unlike food stamps, which just give recipients a lump sum dollar amount, WIC covers most foods in quantities. That’s been very helpful for beneficiaries—they’ve been able to keep receiving the same amounts of grains and proteins, for example, even as prices have risen. But it’s meant the program is spending more. “It protected families, but it does increase the cost of providing those foods to families,” Neuberger said.

Neuberger was crystal clear that WIC is, for now, intact. “The program is fully open now, there aren’t waiting lists, there aren’t cuts,” she said. “But it’s really important for that final funding legislation to include enough money for everyone to continue to be served at the current benefit level.”

If WIC starts putting people on waiting lists, that would return it to how it operated in the 70s and 80s, when the program was new and states didn’t enroll everyone who applied. lawmakers in both parties committed to fully funding it so that everyone can be served. Since then, research has that WIC participation leads to the birth of healthier babies, better nutrition for babies and kids, less food insecurity, higher immunization rates, and higher scores of mental development for children later on. It also gets big returns; for every dollar it spends on prenatal services, it $2.48 in health care costs.

“Remarkably that commitment has held,” Neuberger said. “So, if there were a cut, it would be walking away from more than 25 years of precedent.”