George Miller: “I cannot tell my colleagues how distressed I was to learn that the Committee on Appropriations did not put in the…”

“I cannot tell my colleagues how distressed I was to learn that the Committee on Appropriations did not put in the request by the administration for the full funding of WIC. I have been involved in this program my entire life in the Congress of the United States. I have probably visited more WIC clinics, more site visits, conducted more investigations, asked for more studies and investigations by universities and others of this program, and the result is always the same: This program works. This program saves healthy pregnancies. This program helps make healthy babies. These pregnancies do not know fiscal years. They do not know carryover budgets. They do not know any of that. What the WIC directors have done historically year in and year out is provide us credible information to run this program. They have done it again this year. Mr. Chairman, we cannot interrupt this funding, because if we take away this program in a late-term pregnancy, if we take away the program for a newborn, we change the manner and the ability of that child's brain to develop. We change the manner and the ability of that fetus to develop during that pregnancy, and we ought to listen to the WIC directors and provide for full support of this amendment.”