Senate Fully Funds WIC But Serious Threats to Nutrition Aid Remain

The fiscal year 2026 Agriculture appropriations bill recently approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee includes full funding for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), maintaining the nearly 30-year commitment to provide enough funding to serve all eligible families who seek support from WIC and to provide full benefits. This is an important step forward; access to WIC’s full, science-based food benefit helps ensure that low-income families with young children can afford the foods they need for a healthy diet.

But two serious challenges to critical nutrition assistance for parents and young children lie ahead.

First, in stark contrast to the Senate bill, the version advanced by the House Appropriations Committee in June underfunds WIC and risks forcing the program to turn away eligible families for the first time in nearly three decades — especially if food costs rise and/or WIC participation grows. The House bill also starts the process laid out in President Trump’s 2026 budget of slashing the WIC fruit and vegetable benefit for more than 5 million new and expecting parents and young children in families with low incomes.

Cutting the fruit and vegetable benefit would deprive young children of essential nutrients during a critical developmental window, which could have negative long-term health consequences. It would also go against recommendations from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, undermining the scientific basis of WIC’s healthy food packages.

Second, even if the final 2026 funding legislation includes the Senate’s WIC funding level, the congressional Republican majority and the President might simply override it later. In the Senate, Democratic votes are needed to pass appropriations legislation, but using the “rescission” process can override that same legislation without support from any Democrats — which would allow a partisan process to undo the Senate’s commitment to full funding for WIC. Earlier this month, congressional Republicans and the President rescinded billions of dollars in fiscal year 2025 funding that Congress had approved as part of a bipartisan agreement reached in March. The Administration is also illegally withholding other funding approved by Congress (such as cancelling a program that helps schools across the country purchase produce from local farmers), further undermining trust that a bipartisan spending agreement would be honored.

To address these challenges, it’s essential that congressional Republicans and the President agree — through enforceable legislative provisions — that funding allocated through bipartisan agreements will reach, in full, the people for whom Congress appropriated it. Without language that protects funding allocated for WIC and other critical services, it is hard to see how bipartisan compromises made in the appropriations process will be worth the paper they are written on and, thus, how bipartisan agreements necessary to fund the government on time and with the resources required to serve the country’s needs can be achieved.

In addition, Congress should adopt the Senate’s WIC funding legislation and reject the House version. The Senate bill would provide $8.2 billion, an increase over 2025 funding that’s needed because the number of eligible families with low incomes participating in WIC and the cost of food have both increased.

Also, with food inflation starting to rise again and the economy potentially weakening, Congress should monitor WIC participation and food costs to ensure the Senate funding level remains enough to fully fund WIC in 2026 and increase it in final appropriations legislation if needed.