One shocking fact that has come to light as the nation wrestles with a baby formula shortage is that half of U.S. infants receive WIC (federal food assistance).
According to the USDA website, “The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provides federal grants to states for supplemental foods, health care referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum women, and to infants and children up to age 5 who are found to be at nutritional risk.”
“WIC serves 53 percent of all infants born in the United States,” the USDA proudly tells us.
That one in two American babies is deemed eligible for public assistance is an incredibly distressing third-world level of economic failure. What in the world is going on?
Related: The Baby Formula Shortage Could Have an Effect on the Midterms
For starters, a disastrous 40% of babies in the United States are now born out of wedlock. In addition, around 39% of marriages will end up in divorce. This makes for a lot of single-parent households — one of the strongest predictors there is for financial struggles.
We all celebrate the courage of the ever-more moms who choose life for their unplanned children. Maybe we can also do more to celebrate the traditional virtues, such as encouraging young people to have greater self-respect and restraint. There is already plenty of material on PJ Media about the urgent fight against the sexualization of children, so I won’t belabor the point here.
But hold onto your blood pressure meds — there’s more!
“The WIC program aims to safeguard the health of low-income women, infants, and children up to age 5 who are at nutrition risk,” the USDA explains, “by providing nutritious foods to supplement diets, information on healthy eating, and referrals to health care.”
The site provides a bulleted list of locations where needy parents can latch onto the public assistance program, such as hospitals, county health departments, community centers, and — I kid you not — “Migrant health centers and camps.” So amid the shortage, not only is a sizable chunk of baby formula shipped to the border for newly arriving “asylum seekers,” but once the Biden Collective distributes the migrants around the country, they compete with Americans for short supplies of baby formula — which the foreign nationals receive free of charge on the taxpayers’ dime.
Currently, women and children whose household income is up to 185% of the federal poverty guideline are eligible for WIC assistance. It is admirable and wise to make sure mothers and babies receive adequate nutrition when they are in financial need. It would also be admirable and wise to look at ways to prevent that situation from happening quite so often.
“Sustainability” is a great buzzword these days — millions of earnest young men and women (especially women) are getting degrees in it — but they only focus on environmental sustainability. Financial and societal sustainability is probably a far more urgent issue right now. When too many people are riding in the cart, not enough will be left to pull it. But then again, if your only concern is about sustaining the environment, then societal collapse is probably a good thing.
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